The seven-year-old child who was suspected to have monkeypox (mpox) in Karachi on Thursday, was actually diagnosed with chickenpox 15 days ago, National Institute of Child Health (NICH) Director Dr Nasir Saleem confirmed to Aaj News on Friday.

“The patient has not exhibited any monkeypox symptoms so far, but we have sent his samples to a testing facility in Islamabad just in case. We should receive the reports within five to seven days,” Dr Nasir told the news channel over the phone.

The monkeypox test was just a preventative measure, he added. The patient’s family told doctors that is no that the boy, Muzzamil, had no travel history.

On Saturday, April 29, the Sindh Health Department announced that the child has tested negative for monkeypox.

According to the NICH director, it takes up to three days to get the results of a mpox test. But Pakistan only has one testing facility with the required equipment, located in the federal capital, so test results can take a “bit longer” to arrive.

Dr Nasir went on to say that Muzzamil had been getting treatment at other hospitals in the city but his condition was getting worse, so he was admitted to the NICH on Thursday night and kept in an isolation ward as a preventative measure.

“Normally, chickenpox patients are also kept in isolation wards because their infection is contagious,” he said.

Earlier, Sindh Health Minister Dr Azra Fazl Pechuho ruled out the detection of monkeypox cases in Karachi.

The Sindh health ministry has claimed to have been closely monitoring the situation and established isolation wards at Jinnah and Chandka hospitals in Karachi and Larkana.

What is monkeypox

The monkeypox virus was discovered in Denmark (1958) in monkeys kept for research and the first reported human case of mpox was a nine-month-old boy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, 1970), according to the World Health Organisation.

A global outbreak of the virus took place in 2022-2023. The disease is characterised by rashes, enlarged lymph nodes and fever although most people make a full recovery. The rashes can turn into blisters or lesions.

Symptoms include:

• rash
• fever
• sore throat
• headache
• muscle aches
• back pain
• low energy
• swollen lymph nodes

The disease is contagious and can be passed to others and a person is only declared healed when the rashes or blisters have completely healed and a new layer of skin has formed.

Differences between the symptoms of Monkeypox and Chickenpox