BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany has detected its first case of monkeypox, the German armed forces’ medical service said on Friday.
“The Institute for Microbiology of the German Armed Forces in Munich has now also detected the monkeypox virus beyond doubt for the first time in Germany on 19 May 2022 in a patient with characteristic skin lesions,” the service said in a statement.
German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said that based on the information available, he assumed the virus was not so easily transmitted and that an outbreak could be contained if health authorities acted quickly.
“We will now analyse the virus more closely and examine whether it involves a more contagious variant,” he added.
(Writing by Paul Carrel and Miranda Murray, Editing by William Maclean)