Greece’s national public health organization EODY announced on Thursday the country’s third confirmed case of monkeypox. The statement said that testing of another suspected case is ongoing.
EODY stressed that all three confirmed cases are “imported”, meaning patients contracted the virus while outside of Greece. The organization said the patient with the fourth case under investigation had also recently traveled abroad, adding that an initial test for strains of orthopox viruses not associated with smallpox, which also includes monkeypox, was positive. Testing is ongoing and is expected to be completed soon.
In the same statement, EODY stressed that media reports of cases of monkeypox on the island of Cyclades are not true. In his statement she indicated that the risk of contracting monkeypox to the general population was very low, and that all necessary measures to contain the disease had been taken.
According to a recent report from the European Center for Disease Prevention ECDC, the countries with the highest number of monkeypox cases in Europe are:
- UK: 793
- Spain: 518
- Germany: 469
- Portugal: 304
- France: 247
Note that all three cases in Greece were identified in June.
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