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Health authorities in Stockholm confirmed the latest case in a press release on Saturday evening, only a few hours after a person in the Västra Götaland region tested positive for the virus.
“The patient is receiving care and we are carrying out an infection tracking exercice to determine which people the patient has been in contact with,” Per Follin, the head of Smittskydd Stockholm, the region's centre for infectious diseases.
“It's important to stress that the cases we have so far confirmed are cases where the individual was either infected abroad or had been in contact with someone who was infected outside Sweden.”
The patient, who appears to have contracted the virus from a middle-aged woman who was previously diagnosed after returning from Iran, is being treated in an isolated ward in the infectious diseases clinic at Stockholm's Karolinska Hospital.
The latest case in Västra Götaland appears to have contracted the virus during a recent trip to Iran.
Peter Ulleryd, a specialist in infectious diseases in Gothenburg, said that the patient did not appear to have met too many people since their return.
“Those who have the greatest risk of infection, and who we see being infected, are those extremely close to the patient, and that could be their family, people who live in the same house, or who have worked for a long time together with the person in a small space inside.”
According to a press release from Region Stockholm, the area now has now confirmed four patients infected with the virus, after testing 140 people.
There are now five cases in Västra Götaland, two in Region Jönköping and two in Region Uppsala.
Anders Tegnell, epidemiologist at Sweden's Public Health Agency, told the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper said it was important to stress that most patients did not become seriously ill.
“It's better to bear in mind that this is an illness you get better from, apart from the very, very small group that become so sick that they die. The overwhelming majority get better very quickly.”
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