TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Indonesian Health Ministry on Thursday announced that its team is currently in the process of verifying the sample from one suspected monkeypox case in one of the government’s labs. Despite the initial oropharyngeal testing from the ministry coming back negative on August 4, they insisted that other tests are being done to confirm the case that was detected from Pati, Central Java.

An oropharyngeal test is one of the diagnostic processes to confirm cases of monkeypox.

“The first oropharyngeal test on the sample was indeed a negative but we requested for a skin lesion liquid test,” said the Health Ministry’s director general of disease prevention and control, Maxi Rein Rondonuwu on Thursday afternoon, Antaranews reported.

“The process continues with skin lesion test to get a more accurate analysis,” he added.

The Indonesian Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin in his official statement issued at the Vice Presidential Palace yesterday revealed that the suspected case was identified on July 19. The individual suffered from fever and taken to the hospital on July 21.

A genome sequencing test method will have to be conducted to differentiate between smallpox and monkeypox, which will take up at least three to five days after the extraction of the sample.

There are at least 76 countries that have reported cases of monkeypox across the globe with a total of 22,485 confirmed cases. In ASEAN, there have been three countries that reported suspected cases, namely Singapore with 11 confirmed cases, Thailand (2), and the Philippines (1).

ANTARA

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