UK health worker contracts rare monkeypox virus in third case

LONDON – A health worker from northern England is the third person in Britain to contract a rare disease caused by a Monkeypox virus after treating a patient infected with the disease after a trip to Nigeria, officials said Wednesday. of health.

The last patient had been involved in another case at Blackpool Victoria Hospital prior to the diagnosis of monkeypox, Public Health England said in a statement.

Monkeypox is a rare viral infection that does not usually spread easily from one person to another. The virus is similar to human smallpox, which was eradicated in 1980. Although monkeypox is much sweeter than smallpox, most infected people recovering within a few weeks, it can in rare cases be lethal.

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Health officials said earlier this month that two people in Britain had been diagnosed with monkeypox in separate cases, suspected of being linked to the trip to Nigeria, West Africa. These are the first cases of monkeypox in Britain.

This third case has been isolated and is currently being cared for by a specialized unit of the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, in north-east England, the statement said.

"This health worker treated the patient before the diagnosis of monkeypox was made," said Nick Phin of the National PHE Infection Service.

"We actively monitor contacts for 21 days after exposure to detect anyone with a disease so they can be assessed quickly. It is therefore not totally unexpected that a case has been identified.

"This person has been isolated and we take a very careful approach to ensure that all contacts are followed," he added.

Phin had previously stated that the monkeypox virus was likely to circulate in Nigeria after a major outbreak in 2017, and could therefore affect travelers returning to Britain.

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Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at the British University of Nottingham, said that if the health worker's infection was a sad news, the third case should not be a source of great concern.

"The fact that only one of the 50 contacts of the patient infected with monkeypox has been infected shows how infectious the virus is," he said. "It is wrong to think that we are on the brink of an epidemic on a national scale.

Ball noted that there were two main strains of the monkeypox virus – West Africa and Central Africa – it would be "reasonable" to assume that these cases are of common stock west African. The West African virus is normally associated with a lighter disease, fewer deaths and limited human-to-human transmission, he added.