Public health officials have identified a new type of mpox ((Previously known as “monkeypox”) It may spread more easily between humans. This infectious viral disease, related to smallpox, causes a distinct rash of lesions and swellings. Sometimes it can be deadly.
Health officials first raised the alarm in late June about a new strain of MPOX circulating in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Specifically, the new strain is circulating in the Congo’s North and South Kivu provinces. Scientists believe the strain mutated from a lineage called lineage I. Influenced the United States The MPOX epidemic is likely to expand in Africa and other Western countries between 2022 and 2023. “It is crucial that we address the recent surge in MPOX cases in Africa,” said Rosamund Lewis, technical lead for the MPOX response at the World Health Organization (WHO). He said at a press conference.
Less than two weeks later, on July 11, WHO reiterated that MPOX remains a global health threat, with cases reported from 26 countries in July. More than 11,000 cases and 445 deaths have been reported this year, with children most affected in the Democratic Republic of Congo. South Africa also recently reported 20 cases of MPOX, including three deaths, marking the first time cases have been reported in South Africa since 2022, according to WHO. All cases are men, and most self-identify as men who have sex with men, according to WHO. No cases have been reported with international travel, suggesting community transmission continues.
Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, said at a news conference he was concerned that public health officials “do not fully understand the current dynamics of community transmission in countries like Congo.”
“It’s possible that only very recently it acquired genetic elements that make it more infectious.”
“We’re always concerned about diseases crossing borders, whether that’s in Africa or around the world, and in the last outbreak, we saw MPOX spread very quickly around the world,” Ryan said, referring to 2022. “But what I would say about the last outbreak is that I was very impressed with the way the governments responded, but more importantly, the way the affected communities responded.”
Mpox originated from wild animals that live in the jungles of West and Central Africa. It can occasionally infect humans. The first case of Mpox was diagnosed in 1970 in a 9-year-old boy in a remote area of the Congo. According to the CDC, Mpox causes symptoms such as a painful rash that can appear all over the body. Other symptoms are flu-like and include swollen lymph nodes, muscle and back pain, headache, fever, fatigue, and chills. Lesions eventually form and go through several stages before disappearing.
“The sores on my sensitive areas and under my underwear were so painful I couldn’t sleep,” said Matt Ford, 30. Explained to Self magazine in 2022“The sensation was like a dull, chronic ache that would send sharp pains through me if I made any wrong movements. I’ve never experienced such severe pain before.”
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It’s worth noting that MPOX is transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluids or wounds of a person infected with MPOX. It can also be transmitted through materials, such as clothing or sheets, that have come into contact with bodily fluids or wounds of an infected person. It can also be transmitted through respiratory droplets when people have close face-to-face contact. Before the new strain emerged, experts said this was not the main route of transmission. WHO data91.4 percent of cases are sexually related.
But now, the new strain appears to spread more easily among humans, raising questions about how it’s transmitted.
“This is a phenomenon,” William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told Salon. “Its rapid spread in the Congo leads us to believe that it has somehow acquired a genetic component that makes it more transmissible very recently.”
“The concern is that it may spread more easily and there are signs that it may become more severe, making it harder to control.”
But the exact science behind that is unclear and more research is needed. The new strain appears to have additional mutations that make it more transmissible from person to person, Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Salon in a phone interview.
“It appears that the lineage I virus has evolved into another subtype, which we’re calling lineage 1b, and this lineage of the virus has further mutations that may allow it to spread from person to person more efficiently than other types of MPOX,” Adalja said. “There are concerns that it may be more easily transmitted and may be more difficult to control because of the signs of more severe disease.”
But Adalja stressed that in the bigger picture, this doesn’t affect the effectiveness of vaccines or antiviral drugs — in fact, a vaccine for monkeypox exists. Salon previously reportedIn 2022, the United States released the Zynneos vaccine against monkeypox from the Strategic National Stockpock, but supplies were limited. Additionally, people who received the smallpox vaccine before routine vaccination was discontinued in the 1970s may still be at increased risk of developing the disease. Likely to be protective against mpox.
There are always ways to test. In a media statement, the CDC said, “The viral sequences from this cluster have been reported to contain deletions in certain parts of the genome, which may affect the validity of CDC’s lineage I PCR test.” However, the FDA-authorized CDC Non-Smallpox Orthopoxvirus (NVO) PCR test, as well as additional PCR tests targeting other viral genes, can still detect the virus. Adalja is not too worried about MPOX because it is not airborne, and does not believe it has “pandemic potential” in the U.S.
“I don’t think a virus that spreads by contact has the power to cause a pandemic,” he said. “Body contact, skin-to-skin contact, is a constraint for any kind of pathogen. For something that can be airborne, it’s hard to do anything about it, as we’ve seen with COVID-19.”
But both experts agreed that the humanitarian crisis in Congo needs to be contained.
“From a humanitarian perspective, we are very concerned about the cases that are present in Congo, where diagnostic resources are limited and treatment is limited, especially in rural areas,” Schaffner said, adding that the country has yet to roll out a large-scale vaccine. “One of the ways we can protect the rest of the world is to understand the source of infection in a more effective way — we call this source control. If we can control what’s happening in Congo and neighboring countries, the risk of the disease being exported to many countries around the world is greatly reduced.”
