A monkeypox patient has claimed it took almost two weeks for contact tracers to reach out to him after he caught the virus.
James McFadzean, from London, said he suffered a fever, exhaustion and back pain after catching the rapidly-spreading infection.
The 35-year-old added that the UK Health Security Agency only contacted him on Tuesday - nearly two weeks after he was first diagnosed with monkeypox.
Read More: Monkeypox cases triple around the world but spread is not 'endemic', health experts say
The HR manager, who is gay, said he tested positive after calling up a sexual health clinic to discuss his symptoms, reports The Mirror. He told Mail Online he had slept with around 10 new partners in the run-up to falling ill. When he called the clinic, he was advised to take a monkeypox test, which came back positive, he told TalkTV.
More than 300 Brits have so far been infected with monkeypox in what is the largest outbreak in any country outside of Africa.
James told Mail Online: "It’s no wonder now we’re getting so many more infections if no contact tracing or awareness about you not needing the spots to have the virus being told to people. No-one’s asked me who I’ve been in contact with. I was told that within 24 hours of my diagnosis someone from UKHSA would call me.
"I've called the clinic every day, asking 'why aren’t they calling me, I’m not allowed outside and not allowed to go work. The UKHSA is not calling me, someone needs to document this'.”
James told TalkTV that the UKHSA only reached out to him after he went public with his story. He still does not know who he caught the infection from, although he thinks he caught it after returning to Britain from Dubai.
Offering an update on his health, James told TalkTV: "I actually feel much, much better now. It was very rough for the first week. But now I feel fit and well back to normal health.
"I really didn't think I had it. So, everything you hear everything you read talks about this tell-tale rash or lumps or pimples which I never had at any point of the illness.
"I fell ill much like a flu, fever, very exhausted back pain and on the calling local clinic they advised that I should go for a monkeypox test, which I was surprised by but I went along with it and get tested and I got that positive diagnosis."
James said the UKHSA did not contact him until he spoke to the press.
"Funnily enough, (they did not contact me) until 10 minutes ago after my story broke," he told the TV station.
"All of a sudden, they found my right phone number. That kind of seems farcical because every day I've been calling my clinic, the NHS Trust trying to get someone to get people to call me so we can do contract tracing so we can identify other people at risk.
"Because I was before the numbers started getting big so if they had trouble containing 50, 60, 70 cases, now they're getting into the hundreds. I can only imagine how long it's taking them to contact those people."
James added: "It's not like we haven't just gone through a pandemic which is contagious and we've needed to contact people.
"If you think, okay, the virus is different, but surely the infrastructure is there. As I said 50/ 60 people at the time I felt unwell.
"How many people just to take to call that many people, two people in a call centre. So yeah, it's frustrating and the response they did to an article 'Oh, we've been trying to contact him non-stop' turned out to be untrue. So just own the mistake. Say we're getting on it and do better."
Monkeypox has now become a 'notifiable disease' in the UK, meaning doctors must tell local health authorities about suspected cases.
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.
"This new legislation will support us and our health partners to swiftly identify, treat and control the disease.
"It also supports us with the swift collection and analysis of data which enables us to detect possible outbreaks of the disease and trace close contacts rapidly, whilst offering vaccinations where appropriate to limit onward transmission."
The UKHSA said gay men have been disproportionately affected by the monkeypox outbreak.
Read Next:
