June 7 (UPI) -- Health officials in Britain said that from Wednesday the monkeypox virus will be listed as a notifiable infectious disease as hundreds of cases have been detected in the European county in the past month.
The designation requires doctors to notify their local council or health authority if they suspect a patient has monkeypox while requiring laboratories to notify the British health security agency if it has a confirmed case.
"Rapid diagnosis and reporting is the key to interrupting transmission and containing any further spread of monkeypox," Wendi Shepherd, monkeypox incident director at the nation's health security agency, said in a statement. "This new legislation will support us and other health partners to swiftly identify, treat and control the disease."
The designation was made as British health officials battle an outbreak of the rare disease.
First D.C. monkeypox case confirmed; hundreds of cases counted worldwide