The Spanish Ministry of Health reported this Friday the death of a person with monkeypox, the first death of a patient infected with the disease that is known in Europe.
In Spain, one of the countries with the most cases in the world, 4,298 people have been infected with the virus and one of them died, as included this Friday by the Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies of the Ministry of Health in its report, without giving more data on the causes of death, nor when it occurred.
Asked about the influence of the virus on the death, a spokeswoman for the ministry told AFP that only the autopsy will be able to determine it.
“Of the 3,750 patients with available information, one hundred and twenty cases were hospitalized (3.2%) and one of the cases has died,” this Friday’s report briefly detailed, supported by data from the National Epidemiological Surveillance Network.
Read here: Monkeypox: Why is it concentrated in men with homosexual relationships?
Shortly before, Brazil reported that a 41-year-old man infected with monkeypox died, the first death linked to this disease outside of Africa and the sixth in the world in the current outbreak.
The patient, who according to local media was fighting cancer and had serious immune problems, died at the Eduardo de Menezes Hospital in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais.
“It is important to underline that he had serious comorbidities, so as not to cause panic in the population. Mortality (due to this disease) is still very low,” said the Secretary of Health of Minas Gerais, Fábio Baccheretti, who explained that the patient was undergoing treatment. cancer due to lymphoma.
According to the Ministry of Health, Brazil has registered nearly 1,000 cases of monkeypox, most of them in the states of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, also in the southeast of the country.
The first case was detected on June 10, in a man who had traveled to Europe.
The World Health Organization activated its highest level of alert on Saturday to try to contain the outbreak of monkeypox, which has affected almost 17,000 people in 74 countries.
Until then, only five people had died from this disease, all of them in Africa and 10% of cases have required hospital admission to manage the pain caused by the infection in patients.
Monkeypox – which was first detected in humans in 1970 – is less dangerous and contagious than its cousin smallpox, eradicated in 1980.