The first case of monkeypox has been confirmed in Germany.

The virus had been detected in a patient, the Bundeswehr Institute for Microbiology said on Friday in Munich.

He therefore showed the skin changes typical of the disease.

Kim Bjorn Becker

Editor in Politics.

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According to the treating hospital, the young man is doing relatively well.

He "went into medical care very responsibly immediately after the onset of symptoms to protect others from infection," says Clemens Wendtner, chief physician of infectiology at the Schwabing Clinic in Munich.

The man has slight problems swallowing and a high temperature and currently does not need any special medication.

He will remain isolated in the hospital for as long as doctors believe he can be contagious for three to four weeks.

It is therefore a 26-year-old from Brazil.

According to the Bavarian Ministry of Health, he traveled from Portugal to Germany via Spain and has been in Munich for about a week.

He had previously stayed in Düsseldorf and Frankfurt.

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) called for increased vigilance on Thursday after several cases of monkeypox were registered in other European countries.

So far, monkeypox has mainly occurred in some regions of Africa.

The virus usually spreads in rodents and from there it spreads to humans.

Human infections are most likely to occur through close physical contact or through so-called smear infections.

According to the RKI, men who have sex with men should “immediately seek medical care” if they have any unusual skin changes.

According to the institute, the incubation period after infection is between seven and 21 days.

The virus can cause fever, headache, muscle and back pain, and swollen lymph nodes.

Changes in the skin can occur later.

So-called skin blooms crust over time and then fall off.

They often start on the face and spread to other parts of the body.

In the most recently reported cases, the skin changes began in some cases in the urogenital area.

In contrast to the eradicated human pox, monkeypox is usually milder.

According to the RKI, most infected people recover within several weeks.

The prognosis is therefore “to be rated as favourable”.

However, more severe illnesses are also possible.

Experts currently have no explanation for the accumulation of cases.

"We have not had any major outbreaks of monkeypox in Europe so the current development is unusual," says epidemiologist Charlotte Hammer from the University of Cambridge.

"Previously, monkeypox cases in Europe were usually very sporadic and associated with people returning from Nigeria, for example." According to the current status, the virus is transmitted through close physical contact.

"But smear infections on surfaces are also possible." Since the beginning of May, dozens of suspected and confirmed cases of monkeypox have been reported in several European and North American countries.

There is a lack of epidemiological data on the virus

"We urgently need good epidemiological data to understand whether and how the cases are related," says Fabian Leendertz.

He is founding director of the Helmholtz Institute for "One Health" in Greifswald and head of a project group for the epidemiology of highly contagious and pathogenic microorganisms at the RKI in Berlin.

"According to my current assessments, this is an acute event and I do not think that this is only due to the increased awareness." It is important to genetically examine the monkeypox virus to find out whether there is any evidence of a change in the pathogen, which, for example, suggest better transferability.

Treatment options for a disease are available, says Leendertz.

“There are effective drugs and the vaccines work too.”

Experiences with the pathogen in Africa also suggest that the disease is rarely severe.

"In the case of infections in West Africa, milder forms are usually observed, which are characterized by the occurrence of fever and usually only isolated smallpox lesions on the skin or mucous membrane," says Gerd Sutter, Professor of Virology at the Institute for Infectious Medicine and Zoonoses at Ludwig-Maximilians- University of Munich.

"The cases of monkeypox currently observed in Europe are very likely to be infections originally imported from Nigeria, which are now presumably being transmitted from person to person in limited chains of infection."