South Korea said on Wednesday it would station epidemiologists and public health doctors at the gates of flights arriving from Ethiopia, a major African transport hub, to monitor arriving passengers.
A spokesman for the Korea Disease Control Agency (KDCA) said eight countries had been identified as particularly high risk – Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Ethiopia, the Central African Republic, Kenya, Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Anyone with mpox symptoms (link to symptoms page) must report to a quarantine officer on arrival.
The KDCA said waste from aircraft toilets will also be tested for the virus, and is also distributing brightly colored leaflets with information on the symptoms and prevention of MPOX as part of its awareness campaign.
The leaflet includes a 24-hour emergency telephone number for anyone who thinks they need help.
Thai health authorities announced on Wednesday they had detected the first suspected case of the new virus lineage 1b in Asia in a European man who had recently travelled to Africa.
The patient is being isolated in hospital while Thai authorities conduct tests to see if the virus is indeed the new MPOX lineage.
'Very real risk' of imports
The country's health ministry said it was closely monitoring the situation around the world and had stepped up surveillance at airports.
Any passengers arriving in the country who show a rash or other symptoms consistent with MPOX will be isolated and subjected to PCR testing.
Professor Soo Lee Yang, associate dean of global health at Singapore's Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, said the case was worrying and exposed the “very real risk of lineage 1b being introduced into Southeast Asia”, but it also revealed the strength of Thailand's surveillance system.
Meanwhile, Taiwan has already started stockpiling vaccines and is conducting a vaccination campaign targeting high-risk people, including medical workers.
According to Taiwan's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 135,800 people had already been vaccinated as of Aug. 18, and vials had been purchased to inoculate an additional 70,000 to 80,000 people by the end of the year.
A spokesman said tests for the virus were being carried out at a network of seven laboratories across the country and that the information campaign was a key pillar of the country's strategy to tackle the virus.
