Rabat -Seven suspected monkeypox cases have been confirmed to have tested negative in Morocco as of June 2.
Mouad Merabet, the coordinator of the National Center for Public Health Emergency Operations at the Ministry of Health announced that seven suspected cases had tested negative as of Thursday.
No further potential cases are being investigated, according to the public health official.
Morocco has only confirmed one monkeypox case to date. The Ministry of Health announced the confirmed case on Thursday, saying that the case was imported from a European country.
The patient’s state of health is “stable and does not cause concern.”
The patient is under medical supervision in accordance with the adopted health measures.
The health ministry emphasized that all people who were in contact with the patient are being monitored. The contact cases have not shown any symptoms, the ministry said.
People with the monkeypox virus can show different symptoms, including fever, intense headache, back pain, swollen lymph nodes, as well as skin rash.
The symptoms could last between two days to a month.
Similar to COVID-19 patients, monkeypox carriers also need to undergo confinement for at least 15 days.
A rare disease, monkeypox was first detected in the 1950s among animals. Cases in humans were first recorded in the 1980s in Central and West Africa.
Experts have warned against panic over the monkeypox virus. Moroccan health policy and systems researcher Tayeb Himdi said the risk of monkeypox becoming a pandemic remains too low.
The doctor emphasized that the virus does not spread as easily as COVID-19, arguing that its chain of transmission breaks quickly.
