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Fourth monkeypox case detected in Thailand

BANGKOK: A fourth case of monkeypox was detected in Bangkok on Friday.

According to reports in the Bangkok Post, the patient is a woman who has a record of visiting entertainment venues with foreign tourists.

Dr Opas Karnkawinpong, who is the director-general for the Department of Disease Control, said the places visited by the 22-year-old woman were those at rist of monkeypox transmission.

The woman developed a fever on July 29 but still visited entertainment outlets in Bangkok with her Thai and foreign friends.

On July 30, she started to have blisters on her arms and legs before it spread to other body parts.

On Wednesday, the woman sought treatment at a hospital in Samut Prakan and results of laboratory tests conducted by the Medical Sciences Department and Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Medicine indicated that she had been infected with monkeypox on Thursday.

She was later transferred to Bamrasnaradura Infectious Disease Institute in Nonthaburi, said Dr Opas.

The patient was the country's fourth monkeypox case and the country's first woman who caught the disease.

The first case was a Nigerian man, the second a Thai man in Bangkok and the third a German man in Phuket.

Dr Opas said he had instructed the 6th Disease Control Office in Chon Buri to work closely with the Institute for Urban Disease Control and Prevention and the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration's Health Department to trace down those who were in close contact with the woman, including two of her roommates.

The health official stressed that the monkeypox disease does not spread easily between people.

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