The Swedish public health agency has registered what it claims to be the first case of a new contagious variant of the Mpox virus, known as monkeypox, to the day outside the African continent The agency said the person contracted the infection during a stay in an area of Africa where a major outbreak of Clade 1 mpoxy is currently underway. The news comes just hours after the World Health Organization (WHO) said that The mpox outbreak in parts of Africa is now a public health emergency of international concern. At least 450 people died during the first outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the disease has since spread to parts of central and eastern Africa.
This is the second time in three years that WHO has designated a mpox outbreak as a global emergency. It previously did so in July 2022. The outbreak has hit nearly 100,000 people, mainly gay and bisexual men, in 116 countries, and killed approximately 200 people, reports in the New York Times. The threat this time is more lethal. Since the beginning of this year, the Democratic Republic of the Congo alone has reported more than 14,000 cases of mpox and 524 deaths. Among those most at risk are women and children under 15. “The detection and rapid spread of a new clade of mpox in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, its detection in neighboring countries that had not previously reported mpox, and the potential for further spread within Africa and beyond is very concerning,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO.
Previously called monkeypox, the virus was first discovered in humans in 1970 in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mpox is an infectious disease caused by a virus transmitted to humans from infected animals, but it can also be transmitted from human to human through close physical contact. The disease causes fever, muscle aches, and large pimple-like skin lesions. In May 2022, mpox infections increased worldwide, mainly affecting gay and bisexual men, due to the clade 2b subclade.
WHO had already declared a public health emergency that would last from July 2022 to May 2023. The outbreak, which has now largely subsided, has caused about 140 deaths out of about 90,000 cases.. The clade 1b subclade, which has increased in Congo since September 2023, causes more severe disease than clade 2b, with a higher mortality rate. The emergency has only been declared seven times previously since 2009: for H1N1 swine flu, poliovirus, Ebola, Zika virus, Ebola again, COVID-19 and mpox. “The detection and rapid spread of a new clade of mpox in eastern DRC, its detection in neighbouring countries that had not previously reported mpox, and the potential for further spread in Africa and beyond are very concerning,” Tedros said.
Returning to the case in Sweden, the public health agency thus underlined in a press release. “We believe that Sweden is well prepared to diagnose, isolate and treat people with mumps safely and effectively. The fact that one person is treated for the disease in the country does not imply any risk to the rest of the population.” The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) currently considers this risk to be very low, it said.