In this illustration taken on May 23, 2022, test tubes labeled “Positive and negative monkeypox virus” are seen. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
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BEIJING, Sept 19 (Reuters) – A top Chinese health official advised people to avoid contact with foreigners to prevent infection from monkeypox, after the first known case of the virus was reported in mainland China.
“To prevent possible monkeypox infection and as part of our healthy lifestyle, it is recommended to 1) not have direct skin-to-skin contact with foreigners,” tweeted Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. on his official Weibo page on Saturday.
Wu also urged people to avoid such contact with people who have been abroad within the past three weeks, as well as all “foreigners”, as he warned of vigilance.
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His post was widely shared on social media over the weekend, but the comments section under his original post was disabled on Sunday and in the early hours of Monday in Beijing.
Some, who commented on forwarded or screenshot versions of his post, questioned why foreigners in China, many of whom are long-term residents and have not left recently due to COVID-19 barriers, were considered more dangerous than the chinese.
Wu did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on this sent to his social media account on Monday.
The southwestern city of Chongqing recorded a monkeypox virus infection on Friday in an individual who arrived from abroad, marking the first known monkeypox infection in China amid the latest global outbreak of the virus.
The infected person was a 29-year-old Chinese national who flew to Chongqing on September 14 from Spain, the Centers for Disease Control said later.
The risk of transmission was low as the person was placed in quarantine upon arrival in Chongqing, the municipal health commission said in a statement. All close contacts were isolated and placed under medical observation. Read more
About 90 countries where monkeypox is not endemic have reported outbreaks of the viral disease, which the World Health Organization has declared a global health emergency. There have been more than 60,000 confirmed cases and several non-endemic countries have reported their first related deaths. Read more
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Reporting by Martin Quin Pollard; Additional reporting by Ryan Woo; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise, Robert Birsel
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