The Deputy Minister of Stewardship and Health Surveillance, Lida Sosa, commented that none of the Mercosur countries have the reagents available to detect a case of monkeypox.
“We are talking with PAHO so that the organization can provide countries in the region, like ours, with these reagents. We are now managing these reagents with PAHO. Next week we will be confirming that they are really here or, at least, have left their origin to get here, ”he explained.
Likewise, Sosa pointed out that the technical capacity within the Central Laboratory “is prepared” to carry out the detection procedures, once the necessary reagents are available.
When the supplies are available, the tests to detect the virus will be carried out in an average of 24 hours at the Central Laboratory.
“Once the sample is processed, it would take an average of 24 hours. They are more like blood tests that will be done at the Central Laboratory, which is the reference laboratory,” he added.
PAHO would carry out an equitable distribution of the reagents, according to the needs of the population, said the deputy minister. “The entity will distribute the supplies according to the population and the estimate of cases that could be had. I have not yet confirmed the number of reagents that we are going to receive, but that we are going to receive them, we are going to do it, ”she revealed.
FIRST CASE
SUSPICIOUS
Meanwhile, the arrival of the reagents to our country is being managed, the Vice Minister of Health Surveillance and Stewardship clarified that the health portfolio plans to send to Argentina the sample of the first suspected case of monkeypox in Paraguay.
“We are managing to be able to send the samples to Malbrán in Argentina. There they also do not have the reagent specifically to perform the tests, but they do them through electron microscopy, to make the diagnosis by ruling out, ”he pointed out.
Currently, there is no high demand to detect possible cases, emphasized the deputy minister.
“So far we have only had one suspicious case, so to speak, but it did not meet all the criteria established by the WHO either. These are, for example, that the patient comes from a country with an outbreak of this pathology, that this patient does not comply. Neither, he had contact with a confirmed positive, so he did not have criteria. The only thing he had was some skin lesions and all the virology and bacteriology tests were carried out at the Central Laboratory, which were positive for Staphylococcus aureus. This is consistent with the lesions this patient had on her skin,” he explained.
The epicenter of monkeypox is in Africa, it is not a new virus, it was already identified in the Copenhagen research laboratories in 1958. It made a major outbreak in 1970 on the coast of the Congo and in West Africa, and then there was a third outbreak in 2003 in the United States, as the infectologist Tomás Mateo Balmelli had explained to El Independiente.
Transmission of the monkeypox virus is not easy, it occurs by contact or through saliva. Although there may be interhuman transmission, this has to be by close contact, unlike respiratory viruses.
The “monkey pox” can manifest itself with various symptoms such as fever, chills, body aches and headaches. In addition, the virus causes the growth of the lymph nodes and the appearance of eczema, predominantly on the face or hand.
Mortality due to the action of the virus itself is not very high, there is talk of a
percentage from 0.1 to 1%.
