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SYDNEY, June 3 . Health authorities in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) have detected the third case of monkeypox in a man who has recently returned from Europe.
The man in his 50s developed mild symptoms several days after arriving in Sydney, and was tested for monkeypox after visiting his doctor with symptoms.
It followed the state’s first two cases, a man returning from Europe on May 20, and a man traveling from the state of Queensland.
NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said the three existing cases had not been linked by state contact tracers.
“Monkeypox does not present a transmission risk to the general community, and has until recently not been an infection most clinicians in NSW would have been looking for or concerned about in their patients,” said Chant on Friday.
In the past monkeypox has been endemic in parts of Africa, but since mid-May has been spreading globally, primarily in Europe.
In a recent interview with Xinhua, virologist at the Australian National University (ANU) David Tscharke said the virus would likely spread slowly as transmission requires very close contact.
“If the virus is behaving in the same way as in previous outbreaks, we would not expect a lot of spread … It will be a matter of watching carefully to see if these people spread the virus further.”
He called for smallpox vaccines, which are effective against the virus, to be used for close contact with people who contract monkeypox.
“The key thing with monkeypox virus infections is that vaccination can be effective even after you have been exposed to the virus, so it is possible to vaccinate all recent close contacts of a case.”
