On the morning of October 3, the Ministry of Health of Ho Chi Minh City recorded a case of monkey pox through epidemiological monitoring, and it is the first case in Vietnam.
A health ministry official said he had received information from the Ho Chi Minh City Health Ministry, awaiting an official announcement. The dynamics of this event are unknown.
Ho Chi Minh City’s Ministry of Health is coordinating with relevant departments to strengthen control over monkey pox. Over the past few months, the city’s health department has repeatedly prepared scenarios to combat the disease. Border gates strengthen supervision of inbound travelers, and tropical disease hospitals are in charge of treating seriously ill patients.
When a suspected patient is found at the border gate, medical quarantine officers investigate and utilize it to prepare an epidemiological investigation report. Arrivals with clinical symptoms and epidemiological factors go directly to Ho Chi Minh City Tropical Disease Hospital or a general hospital with an isolation area for examination and monitoring.
Those with suspicious symptoms can go to the nearest municipal hospital for consultation, examination, and diagnostic tests. Hospitals screen, classify and guide patients for testing, and send samples to the Tropical Disease Hospital, Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City, for testing. While waiting for the test results, the patient will either self-quarantine at home or stay in an isolation ward at a hospital if there are no serious symptoms.
Ho Chi Minh Tropical Disease Hospital was assigned as the last hospital in the city to accept cases with severe symptoms or confirmed cases of monkey pox, and not subject to home quarantine.
Suspected symptoms include acute bullous rash of unknown etiology, fever over 38℃, lymph node disease (swollen lymph node), headache, muscle pain, and back pain. The high-risk group are those who have had sex with men.
As of August 15, there were more than 35,000 cases of monkey chickenpox in 92 countries and 12 deaths. Currently, several countries near Vietnam, such as Thailand, Singapore, Korea, China, and Japan, are recording cases. In response, the Ministry of Health warned that there is a high risk of invasive diseases from the beginning of the year until now, and strengthened supervision and regulation on inbound travelers. Accordingly, residents of the monkeypox outbreak areas that enter Vietnam will be monitored, and if they have symptoms of a disease, they should be temporarily isolated and pre-screened by exploiting epidemiological factors.
On July 23, the World Health Organization declared monkeypox an international public health emergency. The mortality rate from monkeypox is 0-11% and is higher in young children. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the mortality rate of monkeypox associated with the West African chapter virus is 1%, which may be higher in immunocompromised individuals.
