A top Chinese health official has warned people against having skin-to-skin contact with foreigners to avoid contracting monkeypox, spurring a backlash among the country’s dwindling expatriate community.
China reported its first case of the infectious disease on Friday in the southwestern city of Chongqing. The patient has been isolated and the risk of an outbreak is low, the local health commission said in a statement on its website.
Despite the reassurance, an official at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention suggested extreme steps to dodge the virus, which has caused an onslaught of infections worldwide since an outbreak was reported in Europe in May.