South Korea sees its first case of Monkeypox

South Korea said on Wednesday (June 22) that the country’s first two suspected instances of monkeypox virus had been recorded, adding that diagnostic testing was underway and that health officials will hold a press conference once the tests were done. 

One of the probable monkeypox patients, a foreign national who had been showing symptoms since Sunday, arrived in the country on Monday and is being treated at a hospital in Busan, in an isolated bed, roughly 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul.

The other, a Korean citizen, was taken to the Medical Center at Incheon for treatment after exhibiting symptoms while entering the nation from Germany on Tuesday afternoon.

“Diagnostic testing and epidemiological investigations on monkeypox are underway, and the health authority will hold a press conference as soon as the results are available to announce measures and reaction plans,” the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said in a statement. The KDCA, on the other hand, did not provide any further information on the people.

According to its four-tier system: monkeypox was recently categorized as an infectious disease of the second degree, along with 22 other contagious diseases such as COVID-19,  chickenpox, and cholera are in a same category.