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Brasilia – Brazilian health authorities are investigating a possible case of monkeypox after they found on Sunday a passenger who disembarked at Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport had signs consistent with the disease, official sources reported on Monday.
The passenger arrived at the airport on August 14 as part of a group of about 650 migrants, mainly from African and Asian countries, who had been settled for weeks without visas and requested shelter at the airport.
According to a statement from the National Health Surveillance Agency, the patient was isolated from other people so that appropriate tests could be carried out and was subsequently transferred to the Emilio Ribas Institute of Infectious Diseases in the capital of Sao Paulo.
Although no details were given on the passenger’s origin or nationality, Brazil’s Health Ministry said in a statement cited by the Brazilian state news agency Brasil that there was “no information” indicating that the patient had “passed through an area affected by the type 1b strain,” which was the reason for the international alert issued by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Of concern now is the rapid spread of the new variant, which has been found on the African continent, mainly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has recorded more than 14,000 cases and 450 deaths this year. .
So far, no cases of the new variant have been detected in Brazil, which has reported 709 confirmed or suspected cases this year, 85% of them in men and 42.2% in HIV, according to the country’s health ministry.
This is much lower than the more than 10,000 cases reported in the country during the peak of the disease in 2022.
According to official data, 16 people have died from the disease since 2022, the most recent in April 2023.
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