Monkeypox is already in Latvia. Suspicions about bioterrorism against sexual minorities

Latvia has reacted quickly and identified the first case of monkeypox. The patient, who was infected in a European Union country, has a mild form of the disease and, according to Jurijs Perevoščikovs, an epidemiologist at the Latvian Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, contacts are being identified to prevent further spread of the disease.

There are currently more than 500 cases of monkeypox worldwide, of which more than 300 have been reported in the European Union. No deaths have been reported in the European Union.

Got infected outside Latvia

The first case of monkeypox has been detected in Latvia. The patient is an adult under 50 years of age and he has a mild form of the disease. Epidemiologists have established that the man contracted monkeypox abroad, in a European Union country, but are not naming the country at this stage. Jurijs Perevoščikovs, Director of the Infectious Disease Risk Analysis and Prevention Department at the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, said that the patient is under medical supervision, while epidemiologists are investigating the case by interviewing the patient and finding out about his possible contacts with other people in Latvia.

"The most important thing is to find out all possible contacts in order to prevent the transmission of monkeypox and the spread of the disease in Latvia," said Jurijs Perevoščikovs.

Neatkarīgā has already written that monkeypox is not a new disease, but in spring this year it started to spread more rapidly outside Africa. The first case of monkeypox in the context of this new outbreak was detected in early May and was linked to travel to and from Nigeria. The number of new cases of monkeypox worldwide now exceeds 500, of which more than 300 have been reported in the European Union. Up until now, monkeypox has not been detected in Europe in its history. Most cases are mild and no deaths have been reported.

"We can now say that this first reported case is not linked to infection in Latvia, but has occurred abroad. Our aim at the moment is to stop the disease, to identify each case as quickly as possible in collaboration with doctors and the laboratory, to carry out diagnostics and normal epidemiological measures concerning the isolation of the patient," said Jurijs Perevoščikovs.

Not Covid, but we must still be careful

Experts point out that monkeypox is not comparable to Covid-19, which spread rapidly and in the form of air droplets. Close contact with the sick person is needed to become infected, the infection does not spread rapidly, the epidemiologist says. Consequently, precautions are not as strict when it comes to contacts. Home quarantine, such as the one during the Covid-19 pandemic, is not planned for monkeypox because the infection is slow and not particularly contagious. It has been reported that monkeypox can only be contracted through sexual contact. This is both true and false.

According to current information, a very large number of those affected are homosexual men, so one recommendation to prevent the disease is to use a condom during casual sex. However, this is insufficient because, as the World Health Organization points out, close contact between the skin or clothing of an infected person and an uninfected person, which can occur, for example, within the same household, is enough for the spread of the disease.

The information that many of those infected are homosexual men raises the possibility of bioterrorism. A homophobic person with knowledge of the epidemiology of the monkeypox virus might have infected one or more active homosexual men with the disease.

A very similar case of bioterrorism occurred in Scotland in 2009 against drug addicts, when an unknown perpetrator added anthrax spores to illicitly circulating heroin. During the incident, 47 addicts were infected, 13 of whom died.

Ludmila Vīksna, chief infectologist at Riga East Clinical University Hospital, describing the course of the disease, said that the patient had a rise in body temperature to 38 or 39 degrees, severe headache, back pain, a rash that can also appear on the palms and soles, as well as swelling of lymph nodes - symptoms that could lead a doctor or patient to consider monkeypox as a diagnosis. However, as the infectologist admitted, we in Latvia do not have much experience with this disease, as it has never been reported here. The USA has the most experience, and Latvia is learning from it.

Ludmila Vīksna also explained that monkeypox is a self-limiting disease, which means that the patient recovers from it without having to go through any drug therapy specifically for monkeypox. Most of the time it ends without serious consequences, but the doctor mentioned that Latvia is preparing to purchase a small amount of medicines that are intended for the specific treatment of smallpox.

Currently the largest outbreak ever observed

The World Health Organization says that the monkey virus is mainly transmitted to humans from animals, but human-to-human transmission has so far been very rare. Monkeypox is a rare viral zoonosis that is found in remote regions of central and western Africa. There is no specific vaccine or treatment for monkeypox, but the smallpox vaccine can also protect against monkeypox.

The symptoms of the disease are similar to those seen with ordinary smallpox, although the symptoms are milder. Smallpox was eradicated from the world in 1980 and, since the smallpox vaccine was stopped, monkeypox has become the most common disease of this group in humans, although of course the number of cases cannot be compared with the prevalence of either influenza or Covid-19.

Monkeypox was first detected in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire) in a nine-year-old boy from a region where smallpox had been contained since 1968. Since then, most cases of monkeypox have been reported in rural areas near tropical forests. The Congo River region is the endemic area for monkeypox. According to the World Health Organization, there was a widespread outbreak of monkeypox in 1996-1997.

In 2003, cases of monkeypox were reported in the United States of America. This was the first time the disease had been detected outside the African continent. People in the US contracted the disease from domesticated dogs, which in turn had acquired the virus from rodents that had migrated from Africa. Since 1970, cases have been reported in ten African countries such as Cameroon, Nigeria and others. In 2017, the last major outbreak occurred in Nigeria, with more than 40 people affected.