THE first person to be diagnosed with monkeypox in Guyana has been released from hospital.

Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony, on Monday, said that the patient was released late last week and is now non-contagious.

“Our first patient is now back at home and that patient is non-infectious and can resume work and we had a lot of his close contacts in quarantine. They have all now been rechecked, none of them showed any signs or symptoms of monkeypox, so they can resume normal activity as well,” Dr Anthony said.

The second person diagnosed with the virus is still being monitored.

The first case of monkeypox in Guyana was confirmed on Monday, August 22; a week later on August 29 another case was recorded.

So far, no other monkeypox case has been recorded in Guyana.

“We haven’t found any new cases, which is a good thing, we have had a number of calls and persons came in because they had various types of rashes but none of it was confirmed as monkeypox because we did the confirmatory test,” the health minister said.

He had previously noted that he does not foresee a lot of monkeypox infections in Guyana due to the nature of the disease which requires being in close contact with an infected individual for an extended period of time. (DPI)