The mon­key­pox pa­tient who fled the May Pen Hos­pi­tal in Claren­don ear­ly Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon is back in iso­la­tion.

The in­sti­tu­tion's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Eu­ge­na Clarke-James con­firmed the de­vel­op­ment. 

"He is back and he is safe," she said, de­clin­ing to state where the man was picked up.

The man was found by a team of po­lice and hos­pi­tal of­fi­cials. 

Clarke-James said hos­pi­tal of­fi­cials are meet­ing to de­ter­mine how to im­prove se­cu­ri­ty to pre­vent a re­cur­rence.

The Health Min­istry said the man jumped through a win­dow at the hos­pi­tal some time af­ter noon and left in a wait­ing mo­tor­car. 

The pa­tient re­port­ed­ly said he want­ed to "en­joy" his va­ca­tion in Ja­maica. 

“He said that he is not go­ing to spend so much mon­ey to come here and not en­joy him­self and he told them (oth­er pa­tients) that by 10 a.m. he was gonna leave the hos­pi­tal and he has al­ready called his ride,” said a health­care work­er at the hos­pi­tal who was not au­tho­rised to speak on the mat­ter. 

“He is self­ish and stay bad and he is in­con­sid­er­ate,” added the of­fi­cial, fum­ing.

It's the first case of the con­ta­gious virus de­tect­ed on the is­land.

Health and Well­ness Min­is­ter Dr Christo­pher Tufton ad­vised the coun­try on Ju­ly 6.  

He said the man went to the pub­lic health sys­tem on Ju­ly 5, hav­ing ar­rived on the is­land five days ear­li­er from the Unit­ed King­dom.

Mon­key­pox is a vi­ral dis­ease that can be trans­mit­ted from per­son to per­son.

Symp­toms in­clude fever, in­tense headache, swelling of the lymph nodes, back pain, mus­cle ache, lack of en­er­gy, and/or rash.

The in­cu­ba­tion pe­ri­od is be­tween five and 21 days

- Ce­celia Camp­bell-Liv­ingston 

Source: Ja­maica Glean­er