Italian monkeypox cases rise to 740, Lombardy leads

(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 26 - Italian monkeypox cases have risen by 26 to 740 in the last three days, the health ministry said in its latest update Friday.
    Some 201 are linked to trips abroad, the ministry said.
    Males are almost all the cases, 730, with just 10 women infected.
    The average age of cases is 37.
    There have been no deaths from the pox in Italy, but an Italian tourist has died in Cuba, the first case on the Caribbean island.
    Among Italy's regions, the highest number of cases is Lombardy with 318, the ministry said.
    It is followed by Lazio with 136, Emilia Romagna (75), and Veneto (50).
    Only Basilicata, Calabria, Molise, Umbria and Val d'Aosta have reported no cases.
    The Italian embassy in Havana is assisting the family of the Italian who died of monkeypox on the island.
    He was named as Germano Mancini, 50, commander of a Carabinieri barracks at Scorze' near Venice, and originally from Pescara in Abruzzo.
    Mancini had been on Cuba since August 15 and was taken ill three days later.
    Italy recently started monkeypox vaccinations with the first jabs being given at Rome's Spallanzani Hospital two weeks ago followed by others in Bologna and the rest of Emilia-Romagna.
    The other two priority regions, Lombardy and Veneto, began giving out doses of the vaccine later that week.
    On July 23 the World Health Organization said monkeypox was a "global health emergency".
    The vaccination campaign is not a mass effort like the COVID one but is instead directed at persons at greatest risk of infection such as gays, transgender, bisexuals and other men who have sex with men, as well as lab staff with possible exposure to the orthopoxvirus.
    The Spallanzani is Italy's premier infectious disease hospital and treated the first COVID-19 patients in early 2020. (ANSA).