Officials step up monkeypox screening

Anutin: Curb risky sexual behaviour
Anutin: Control risky sexual behavior

The general public Health Ministry is certainly ramping up the screening process of air travellers from countries confirming a spread associated with monkeypox to step up precautions against the disease.

Open public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said the screening is being executed at airports plus targets travellers from outbreak countries.

He stated monkeypox is not a critical disease and it is not highly transmissible with no direct contact with body fluids or lesions or even prolonged contact with a good infected person.

Generally, many patients are able to recover at home, he stated.

Health authorities are doubling efforts to educate the public about the disease plus enhance vigilance and investigative measures, he said.

Since the disease will be transmitted via close physical contact, getting multiple sex companions can increase the infections risk, he said.

Based on the World Health Business, monkeypox cases are usually increasing among men who have sex along with other men.

Homosexual and bisexual men are advised to limit the number of sex partners to protect themselves and help slower the virus’ transmitting, it said.

“Monkeypox can be avoided if we consider precautions and avoid risky sexual conduct, ” Mr Anutin said.

The minister added that monkeypox vaccines will initially be kept for immunisation of frontline health care workers first.

Dr Sopon Iamsirithaworn, deputy director-general of the Department associated with Disease Control, mentioned the department provides told quarantine offices at international airports across the country to step up the particular screening of arrivals from countries exactly where monkeypox outbreaks are taking place.

As of Friday, an overall total of 2, 389 arrivals from Europe and 138 through Africa were screened and no suspected situations of infection had been detected, Dr Sopon said.

He also supplied an update in the two monkeypox situations detected in Thailand so far.

The first is a 27-year-old Nigerian national showed have the disease upon July 18 in Phuket. He later on fled the kingdom to Cambodia on July 21 before being arrested in Phnom Penh.

More than fifty people who came into contact with the man while he or she was in Phuket are already tracked and no fresh attacks have been detected, Dr Sopon said.

The second verified case, which has nothing to with the Nigerian man, involves the 47-year-old Thai who might be being treated with Vajira Hospital, Doctor Sopon said.

The man informed health authorities he previously sex with an international man and began developing symptoms upon July 15, Dr Sopon said.

Authorities are looking for the foreign man, he said.

Health professionals also collected samples from 17 folks who came in contact with the patient for lab tests upon Friday, he mentioned.

Results of 16 of them returned negative yesterday while the result of the other was pending, he said.

All are subjected to 21 days of quarantine, Dr Sopon said.