Diagnosed with monkeypox in Iceland – A cause for concern says Chief Epidemiologist

A middle-aged man was diagnosed with mon­keypox on Tuesday. This is the fourth infection to be diagnosed in Iceland and the country’s Chief Epidem­i­olog­ist says that the case is most likely a domestic infection, which is a cause for concern. RÚV orig­inally reported on this.

„These are sim­ilar symptoms as in the other three, which are mainly skin symptoms. People are not particularly sick,“ says Þórólfur Guðnason, Chief Epidem­i­olog­ist, in an interview with RÚV.

The infected indi­vi­dual is currently in isolation in his home.

Guðnason says the infection is being traced, but that it likely is a domestic infection. According to him, there is rea­son to worry if such infections become more common.

More than 3,000 people have been diagnosed with mon­keypox in Europe, and the num­ber of infections on the continent has been increasing.

At the same time as mon­keypox seems to be spr­ea­d­ing domestically, there has been an increase in Covid infections recently. On Monday, 420 indi­vi­du­als were diagnosed with the dise­ase. Recently, there have been reports of a new vari­ety that is said to be more harm­ful than prior ones. However, Guðnason says that it is still too early to be particularly concerned about that, as the ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) has not publ­is­hed anyt­hing on it. He says there often is some concern about new vari­eties, but that it is necessary to wait and see what the dise­ase looks like. Experiments are carried out in laborator­ies and after that we can start to und­er­stand the behavior of the new vari­eties.

„So, I think it’s too early to make some sort of a bad prediction, we will just have to see,“ says Guðnason.

This article was orig­inally publ­is­hed in Icelandic.