ISLAMABAD: On Monday, the Border Health Services (BHS) at the Islamabad Airport discovered a second possible case of mpox, amid a countrywide alert that was extended to all entrance ports.
After traveling from a Gulf nation, the 47-year-old suspect was taken to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) and placed in the isolation ward. Dr. Naseem Akhtar, Pims focal person for mpox, informed Dawn that his sample had been forwarded to the National Institute of Health (NIH) for the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test.
According to the infectious diseases specialist, the suspected patient is a laborer from Azad Jammu and Kashmir who works in a Gulf nation. She added that the patient’s condition is not critical and that he will soon get better. “As soon as the NIH declares the sample positive, we will begin contact tracing,” she stated.
Sajid Shah, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, said that the identification and isolation of the suspected traveler at the airport was encouraging. “It demonstrates that the nation has been closely adhering to international health regulations, and the practice will lessen the likelihood of an outbreak of local disease transmission,” the speaker stated.
A health ministry official states that the confirmed case is unrelated to the potentially harmful novel virus strain.
He said that Dr. Malik Mukhtar, the prime minister’s coordinator for health, visited the Islamabad International Airport on Monday and examined the screening setup to make sure no suspected mpox patient entered the nation unidentified.
In order to guarantee that international health rules are followed, Dr. Mukhtar also reviewed the plans created for passenger screening at all entry points and received a briefing from BHS employees, the statement said.
The first individual to test positive for mpox originated in a Gulf nation and traveled to Mardan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. When he later visited a hospital for additional issues, mpox was discovered to be the cause.
The two main clades of the mpox virus are Clade I and Clade II. Since Clade II is known to induce milder symptoms than Clade I, it was mostly related to the previous global pandemic that occurred between 2022 and 2023. Clade Ib is currently the main cause of the ongoing outbreak that is occurring in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). There haven’t been any Clade I cases documented in the nation as of yet, Sajid Shah stated.
Following the discovery of a novel strain, the World Health Organization (WHO) proclaimed the recent disease epidemic to be a public health emergency of international significance.
Following instances in the DRC that extended to neighboring countries, the WHO last week issued the highest level of alert for the illness outbreak in Africa. Since the disease’s current outbreak in January 2023, there have been 27,000 cases and more than 1,100 deaths in the DRC, most of which have been children.
The first indication of the new strain of mpox spreading outside of Africa was revealed last week when international health officials connected a Swedish case of infection to an expanding outbreak in the continent.
