'This new legislation will support us and our health partners to swiftly identify, treat and control the disease. Wendi Shepherd, monkeypox incident director at UKHSA, said: 'Rapid diagnosis and reporting is the key to interrupting transmission and containing any further spread of monkeypox. To date, 302 infections have been confirmed in the UK. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said laboratories must also tell it if the virus is identified in a sample. Monkeypox has become a notifiable disease in England, meaning all medics are legally obliged to alert local health authorities to suspected cases. The UKHSA claims it has tried on multiple attempts to get in touch with James. I remember going to Covid centres and it wasn't as daunting or overwhelming as this.'Īt the time, several dozen people had already been diagnosed with the mystery monkeypox virus and it was clear the virus was spreading in London among gay and bisexual men. 'The whole experience kind of heightens your sense of, "oh this must be really serious".
'When I got to the clinic I was told to go and wait outside the main door and call them, they said they were going to put on PPE and they told me not to touch door handles,' he said. James had just returned from Dubai, where being gay is illegal, after four years following a 'shock' HIV diagnosis in February. It saw him lose his job and home.Īfter contacting his local STI clinic in west London, James was sent for tests at a specialist centre in Soho on May 25 and was told to avoid public transport or close contact with others. 'I’m a gay man, and having just come back to the UK, I was having a good time,' he told MailOnline.īut medics wrongly assumed it wasn't monkeypox because he didn't have the virus' tell-tale rash. He became convinced he had a sexually transmitted infection (STI) after sleeping with around 10 new partners in the weeks before his symptoms started.
James was readjusting to life in west London when he began suffering from 'really weird aches' in his lower back, exhaustion, extreme thirst and pain when he used the toilet. He accused the UK of having a lackadaisical approach to contact tracing, saying it was 'no wonder' Britain had more cases than any other country outside of Africa. There is also a lack of awareness about monkeypox's lesser-known symptoms, he claimed. James - who wished to keep his surname anonymous - admitted he is not following self-isolation rules because 'I was told to stay home until UKHSA contacted me. He slammed the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) for 'a real lack of any basic process or care to stop the spread' of the tropical virus, which has so far infected more than 300 Britons, mostly gay and bisexual men. James M, 35, has spoken out after claiming that health chiefs still haven't contacted him despite being diagnosed with monkeypox nearly a fortnight ago. The first British monkeypox patient to go public is an HR manager from London who caught the virus after being deported from Dubai for testing positive for HIV, MailOnline can reveal. When using a search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo check the safe search settings where you can exclude adult content sites from your search results Īsk your internet service provider if they offer additional filters īe responsible, know what your children are doing online.James M, 35, has become the first British monkeypox patient to go public Use family filters of your operating systems and/or browsers Other steps you can take to protect your children are: More information about the RTA Label and compatible services can be found here. Parental tools that are compatible with the RTA label will block access to this site.
We use the "Restricted To Adults" (RTA) website label to better enable parental filtering.
Protect your children from adult content and block access to this site by using parental controls. PARENTS, PLEASE BE ADVISED: If you are a parent, it is your responsibility to keep any age-restricted content from being displayed to your children or wards. Furthermore, you represent and warrant that you will not allow any minor access to this site or services. This website should only be accessed if you are at least 18 years old or of legal age to view such material in your local jurisdiction, whichever is greater. You are about to enter a website that contains explicit material (pornography).