Despite the efforts of the Ministry of Health to conduct contract tracing since the confirmation of the first monkeypox case, the Health Minister on Wednesday acknowledged that the authorities were having difficulty establishing how the first confirmed case contracted the virus.
Speaking during his daily COVID update, Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony said that it has been a challenge trying to contact some of the names that were provided by the first monkeypox patient. However, the man’s immediate family are not showing any signs or symptoms of the virus, and it is still unknown how the man was infected, since the virus is transmitted through close contact.
“So the persons who the patient has been in contact with, we have been in touch with the names…that the patient has given us. It is hard to find some of the contacts because he doesn’t have any particular on those persons, but the immediate family members and persons who he have been in contact with regularly, those persons are in quarantine. But if you pass by somebody… that’s hard to find out who it was that he was next to… so we haven’t been able to get all of that information… it is very difficult to track and trace.”
The minister noted that a similar issue is being faced with the second patient.
According to Anthony, persons who are diagnosed with the virus will only be discharged from the Infectious Diseases Hospital based on their recovery which takes a maximum of 14 to 21 days.
“So that depends on how the patient has been healing, but generally from the time of exposure to the time the patient has clinical manifestation… it would probably be about fourteen days or so, because the disease itself in most instances would be a self-limiting disease, so generally fourteen days, twenty-one days, that the patient should feel well and would not be infectious and can be discharged… there are patients who can develop complications so if there are those who develop complications might have to stay in the hospital for a longer period”, he said.
Anthony also informed that the COVID hotline has now been repurposed to the monkeypox hotline. He added that persons who are showing signs or symptoms of the virus can also contact the new hotline at 0449.
