KARACHI: Four air travellers suspected of having monkeypox (mpox) tested negative for the disease on Friday.

Officials sources told Dawn that the passengers, two of them hailing from Somalia and as many Pakistani deportees, had arrived in Karachi from Dubai on Thursday on different flights.

“None of them tested positive. The teenager accompanied by his father was travelling to Pakistan for repair of a congenital disease,” shared an official.

The suspected patients had been quarantined at a government health facility in Bhittaiabad in Gulistan-i-Jauhar and their samples were analysed at the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS).

Meanwhile, the National Institute of Child Health (NICH) has sent a sample of a seven-year-old child suspected of having mpox disease to DUHS.

A resident of Lyari, the child is stated to be a liver disease patient. He had been under treatment at the Indus Hospital for over six months from where he was recently referred to the NICH.

“Though it seems to be a complicated case of chickenpox, we have sent his samples for analysis for monkeypox disease,” NICH director Dr Nasir Saleem Saddal said, adding that the child had a weak immune system.

The child, according to NICH doctors, has no travel or contact history.

“The case couldn’t even be defined as a suspected case and the staff had to get him tested as a suspected mpox case following misleading news in the social media,” Dr Liaquat Ali Halo, deputy director at NICH, explained.

The children’s hospital had set up an isolation unit for mpox cases, he said.

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2023