Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, August 1. Comprehensive Xinhua News Agency’s foreign correspondents reported: According to Indian media reports on July 31, the country’s first monkeypox death case occurred in Kerala, southern India, on the 30th. The Spanish Ministry of Health confirmed on July 30 that the country had recorded its second death from monkeypox.
The picture shows an ambulance entering a hospital in New Delhi, India, on April 24, 2021. Xinhua News Agency
According to the “India Express” report, a 22-year-old male patient returned to Kerala from the United Arab Emirates on July 22. He was admitted to the hospital for treatment with a fever, and was transferred to another hospital for treatment after his condition worsened. He died on the afternoon of the 30th.
Kerala Health Minister George told local media on July 31 that the patient was admitted to the hospital with symptoms of encephalitis and fatigue, and had no symptoms of monkeypox, but the patient had been admitted to the hospital before flying to Kerala. He was tested for monkeypox virus in the United Arab Emirates, and his family only handed over the positive test results to the local hospital on the 30th.
According to reports, the local health department has sent relevant samples to the National Institute of Virology of India for testing and is awaiting confirmation, and Kerala will also set up an expert team to investigate.
A total of 4 cases of monkeypox have been reported in India, 3 of which were returned to Kerala from the UAE, and the other was in the capital, New Delhi.
The second death from monkeypox in Spain was a 31-year-old man, according to the health department of Andalusia. The Carlos III Health Institute in Spain is currently studying biological samples from the deceased to further confirm the relationship between their deaths and the virus infection.
So far, two deaths have been reported in Spain during the monkeypox outbreak. The Spanish Ministry of Health confirmed on July 29 the country’s first death from monkeypox. According to Spanish radio and television companies, this is also the first death in Europe in this monkeypox epidemic.
The Western Ministry of Health has warned that Spain has now become “one of the countries most affected by the monkeypox outbreak in the world”. According to data provided by the Spanish National Epidemiological Surveillance Network on July 29, a total of 4,298 monkeypox cases were confirmed in the country, 120 of which required hospitalization, and the average age of those infected was 37 years old.
The World Health Organization declared on July 23 that the monkeypox outbreak in many countries constituted a “public health emergency of international concern”. (Participating reporters: Jiang Lei, Xie Yuzhi)