ISLAMABAD—Pakistan reported its fourth case of mpox on Saturday, when a passenger from Saudi Arabia who had just arrived in the country tested positive for the disease.
Dr. Nasim Akhtar, head of the infectious diseases department at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad, said that an mpox case was found in a female lab worker who came from Makkah.
The person with mpox was moved to the isolation room at the PIMS hospital in the federal capital, the expert said.
Also, the National Institute of Health (NIH) has proven that mpox is present in a 19-year-old woman.
All four people with mpox in Pakistan came from the same place: Saudi Arabia. The NIH said that three of them are from Islamabad and one is from Karachi.
Officials from the Federal Ministry of Health said that there is no proof yet that the disease is being spread within the country.
Mpox, also called “monkeypox,” is a disease caused by the monkeypox virus, which is a species of the Orthopoxvirus family. Two different clades exist — clade I and clade II.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says that the most common symptoms of monkeypox or mpox are a skin rash or mucosal lesions that can last 2–4 weeks and are followed by fever, headache, muscle aches, back pain, low energy, and swollen lymph nodes.
People can get mumps by coming in contact with someone who has it, touching something that has it, or being around sick animals.
Supportive care is used to treat the disease. Some vaccines and treatments for smallpox that have been cleared for use in some countries can also be used for mpox.
Since May 2022, more than 78,000 people around the world have been infected with monkeypox.