Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) – The first death fron monkeypox was recorded in the United States. The deceased was a resident of Harris County in Texas, who suffered from a number of concomitant diseases, TASS reports.

Doctors in Texas have reported the death of a patient who contracted monkeypox, the first death since contracting the disease in the United States.

The deceased was a resident of Harris County, who suffered from a number of comorbidities. Whether or not monkeypox was the main cause of the patient’s death is unclear, according to a press release from the local health department, and the results of the post-mortem examination will be made public at a later date.

According to the US Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 18,000 cases of monkeypox infection have now been recorded in the country. The leaders in the number of infected are the states of California and New York, where 3,291 and 3,197 cases were registered, respectively. In the state of Texas, according to the latest data, 1,604 cases of infection with monkeypox were identified.

Monkeypox is a rare viral disease that occurs mainly in remote areas of central and western Africa near tropical rainforests. The first case of transmission of this disease from an animal to a person was recorded in 1970 on the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to the WHO, this virus is transmitted to humans from wild animals such as rodents and primates, and its secondary spread by human-to-human transmission is limited. Typically, the case fatality rate for monkeypox outbreaks is between 1% and 10%. The majority of deaths occur in younger age groups.