The Cuban Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) reported this Saturday about the first case of Monkeypox in the country, which is a patient of Italian nationality, who is currently in critical condition with danger to life.
According to the authorities, the citizen arrived in Cuba as a tourist on Monday, August 15, stayed in a rented house and two days later began to show symptoms.
“On August 17 he presented general symptoms and went to the health services on the 18th due to their persistence. During the first medical care provided, the symptoms worsened, for which he required urgent transfer for hospitalization and intensive treatment, arriving at the hospital in cardiac arrest, from which he recovered,” the MINSAP statement specified.
The information itself details that the patient had “skin lesions” that led to suspicion of a possible contagion of Monkeypox. Taking this into account, samples were taken and sent to the National Reference Laboratory of the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine, where the infection was confirmed by real-time PCR last morning.
We report on the first case of Monkeypox detected in #Cuba.
Epidemiological research is deepened and focus control actions are carried out, as provided in the approved protocol to deal with this disease in the country.➡️https://t.co/hduGXERVi9 pic.twitter.com/R6zSOG2ZDW
— Cuban Ministry of Public Health (@MINSAPCuba) August 21, 2022
“The patient is in critical condition, with danger to his life. Possible associated causes that may have conditioned the severity of it are being studied, ”said the MINSAP note.
There are risks of contagion in other people because the patient visited several places in the western provinces of the country, so the health authorities deepen the “epidemiological investigation and focus control actions are carried out, as provided in the approved protocol to face this disease in the country.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the monkeypox outbreak a global health emergency less than a month ago. , when more than 70 countries had reported at least one case.
Until August 19, the number of nations with infections of the disease amounts to 94 and the total number of cases to 41,358, of which more than 40,000 are in a country that has historically not reported cases of monkeypox.
In America, 24 countries have diagnosed at least one contagion, with the worst indicators for the United States, which had 14,594 patients with the virus at the end of August 19. However, so far only two people have died (one in Ecuador and one in Brazil) on the continent from the disease.
According to the WHO, monkeypox “is a viral zoonosis that occurs mainly in tropical forest areas of central and western Africa and is sporadically exported to other regions.”
The clinical signs of the disease are usually “fever, rash, and swollen lymph nodes, and it can cause a variety of medical complications,” although it is less contagious than smallpox (eradicated in 1980) and causes less severe disease.
