The person was sick when they boarded the plane. Five days before leaving Nigeria for Britain, they noticed a rash that spread into a scattering of fluid-filled bumps. When the plane touched down on 4 May, they wasted no time. The person attended hospital where doctors, alerted by their recent travel, immediately suspected monkeypox. The patient was isolated and a doctor, clad in full PPE, took a swab from a blister on their skin.
Because monkeypox is listed as a “high-consequence infectious disease”, the situation moved fast. The sample was sent to Porton Down science park in Wiltshire where the UK Health Security Agency’s rare and imported pathogens laboratory swiftly ran a PCR test. This confirmed the infection, which the agency announced the next day, on 7 May.
