In Israel, a first case of monkey pox has been detected. Guidelines have been issued to doctors across the country to report other possible cases.
With our correspondent in Jerusalem, Michael Paul
Nitzan Horowitz, the Israeli Minister of Health, wants to be reassuring: this is not the start of an epidemic, he says, but an isolated case.
He is said to be a thirty-year-old man who recently returned from Western Europe. The country where he stayed is not specified.
►Read again: Cases of “monkey pox” are increasing in Europe and North America
He has been in contact with a patient abroad, but his symptoms are, at this stage at least, mild. He is in solitary confinement at Ichilov Hospital, Tel Aviv’s largest hospital.
Either way, an emergency meeting of health officials was called over the weekend. And directives have been issued to all doctors in the country. This precisely at a time when on another front, that of the Covid, the last restrictions are falling. As of this weekend, PCR testing upon arrival of travelers at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv is no longer mandatory. And wearing a sanitary mask is no longer required on international flights.
► Listen again: Monkey pox, “this human-human contamination is new and atypical”