Monkeypox hits Guyana

Aug 23, 2022 News

Kaieteur News – With over 42,000 cases detected in 95 countries, Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony on Monday confirmed that Guyana has recorded its first Monkeypox case over the weekend.

The Minister in a brief interview yesterday said that the country’s first case is a Region Four man in his 50s, who has since been placed in isolation at the Ocean View Hospital. “We have over the last weekend had a case of suspected Monkeypox, clinically the person had all the signs and symptoms of Monkeypox and we have been able to confirm that by using PCR to do the confirmatory diagnosis. So we now have our first case of Monkeypox in Guyana and we have since isolated the patient and so that patient is now in an isolated area at the Ocean View Hospital, that patient is stable and is doing very well,” he confirmed yesterday.

Minister explained that persons who the patient has been in contact with are now in quarantine. With the first case detected, the Minister noted that they are taking all necessary measures and advised the general public “not to panic”.

Prior to the first case, local health authorities have been preparing to deal with the eventuality of detecting the virus here. Yesterday the Minister assured that “we have diagnostic capabilities, we have our labs that are prepared, we have a lot of people who have been trained over the last couple of months, we have trained a number of physicians just in case we have cases.”

“So I don’t want people to panic because monkeypox is not something that is readily transmissible,” he mentioned. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), monkeypox virus is an orthopoxvirus that causes a disease with symptoms similar, but less severe, to smallpox. Monkeypox is a disease that is transmitted from animals to humans. The general symptom of monkeypox is a rash. From the time one is exposed to the time of sign of infections, the disease last between 14 to 21 days.

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