South Korea said on Wednesday that epidemiologists and public health doctors will be deployed at the gates of flights arriving from Ethiopia, a major transport hub for Africa, to monitor incoming passengers.
A spokesperson for the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said it identified eight countries at particular risk – Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Ethiopia, Central African Republic, Kenya, Congo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Anyone with mpox symptoms will be required to report to quarantine officers on arrival.
Waste from aircraft toilets will also be monitored for the virus, said the KDCA, which is also distributing a brightly coloured leaflet with information on mpox symptoms and prevention as part of a public information campaign to raise awareness.
The leaflet gives an emergency 24 hour number for anyone who believes they need help.
Health authorities in Thailand on Wednesday said they had detected Asia’s first suspected case of the new clade 1b of the virus in a European man who had recently travelled to Africa.
The patient been quarantined in hospital while the Thai authorities run tests to confirm if the virus is indeed from the new clade of mpox.
‘Very real risk’ of importations
The country’s health ministry said it was closely monitoring the situation worldwide and was boosting surveillance at airports.
Passengers who arrive in the country showing a rash or other symptoms consistent with mpox will be isolated and given PCR tests, it said.
Professor Hsu Li Yang, vice dean of global health at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health in Singapore said that while the case was concerning and exposed the “very real risk of clade 1b importations into Southeast Asia”, it also revealed the strength of the Thai surveillance system.The country was also the first place outside China to detect Covid-19 in January 2020.
Taiwan, meanwhile, has already begun stockpiling vaccines and conducting targeted immunisation campaigns for people at high risk, including medical workers.
As of August 18, 135,800 people had already been vaccinated, and vials had been purchased to give to 70,000 to 80,000 more by the end of this year, Taiwan’s Centres for Disease Control said.
A nationwide network of seven laboratories was testing for the virus, and a public information campaign was a key plank of the strategy to combat the new strain, a spokesperson said.
