Korea’s second monkeypox patient contacted 15 people after arriving at Incheon International Airport from Europe on Aug. 19, raising concerns over loopholes in the nation’s monkeypox screening system.
According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), the patient tested positive for monkeypox on Saturday, about two weeks after entering Korea.
Of the 15 people the patient contacted, the KDCA classified two as “medium-risk group,” and the rest 13, as “low-risk group.” The two were a family member and a friend, and the other 13 were people who met the patient at a clinic and a pharmacy.
The health authorities classify contacts of monkeypox patients into high-risk, medium-risk, and low-risk groups, depending on whether the contacted people wore protective equipment and whether they had direct or indirect contact.
The medium-risk group receives active monitoring from the nearby public health center for 21 days from the exposure date.
KDCA officials said there was almost no possibility that the second patient could spread the virus through contact with the local community.
Still, the nation's quarantine system failed to spot the suspected case even after the patient showed symptoms.
According to the KDCA, the second monkeypox patient was asymptomatic on arrival. After 10 days, on Aug. 28, symptoms including fever, headache, and dizziness began to appear. On Aug. 30, the patient experienced some local pain and visited a primary medical institution.
The patient did not mention any travel history to the doctor, and the doctor did not check with the national healthcare system if the patient had visited any of the five countries (the U.K., Spain, Germany, Portugal, and France) that had frequently reported monkeypox cases.
The doctor did not report the patient to the authorities as a suspected monkeypox case because the patient did not have any rash or blister.
On Thursday, the patient voluntarily reported to a public health center about a suspected monkeypox case and received the monkeypox diagnosis from an epidemiologist from the Seoul metropolitan government on Saturday.
Earlier, the first case of monkeypox in Korea occurred in a 34-year-old bisexual male who returned to the country on June 21 from Germany.
Global monkeypox cases hit 53,027 as of Friday, with the U.S. reporting the largest number of patients with 19,961, followed by Spain with 6,543, Brazil with 5,037, France with 3,558, and Germany with 3,493, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).