Kathrine Frich
These new cases arrive right on the heels of another health scare in Russia.
Keeping rare illnesses out of major cities is a constant race against the clock for health workers.
Modern travel makes it easy for viruses to cross borders before anyone spots the first symptom.
Now, hospital wards in two major metropolitan areas are dealing with a fresh cluster of cases.
Hospital beds fill up
Four people in St. Petersburg have tested positive for monkeypox, according to Latvian news outlet LA.LV and Ukrainian portal Dialog.ua.
All four residents are now in a local hospital. Russian media outlets report that doctors consider their condition moderately serious.
The alert goes beyond Russia’s second-largest city. In the Moscow region, medics admitted five more people to a hospital after they came into contact with a suspected monkeypox patient, LA.LV reported.
Sergei Markitan, the head doctor at Ramensky Hospital, stated that these five patients are in satisfactory condition while they stay under medical watch.
At the time of his update, Markitan noted that doctors were still waiting for lab test results ordered by Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s consumer health watchdog.
According to information from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cited by LA.LV, monkeypox is a rare virus most often seen in Central and West Africa. It spreads from rodents and primates to humans, and symptoms usually show up between five and 21 days after infection.
Earlier cases and denials
This is not the first time the virus has hit Russia this year. Back in February, health officials tracked cases in both the Moscow region and St. Petersburg, Dialog.ua reported.
Doctors at Domodedovo Hospital confirmed one man had the virus and admitted a close contact the very next day, followed two weeks later by two tourists returning to St. Petersburg from Thailand.
These new cases arrive right on the heels of another health scare in Russia. In early October, an employee at the Irkutsk Plague Research Institute in Siberia died, sparking widespread rumours of a plague outbreak, according to LA.LV.
Moscow quickly pushed back against those claims. Russian officials insisted the woman died of severe pneumonia and maintained that lab tests showed no dangerous germs. Still, the World Health Organization stated on October 10 that the exact cause of her death remains unknown, though the agency sees no signs that the illness is spreading.
