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India has become the third country outside Africa, besides Sweden and Thailand, to report a case of the more lethal clade 1b of mpox, according to international news agency Reuters.
A 38-year-old man from Kerala’s Malappuram district, who had recently returned from the United Arab Emirates, has been found to be positive for clade 1b, the Hindustan Times reported.
“The emergence last year and rapid spread of a new virus strain in DRC, clade 1b, which appears to be spreading mainly through sexual networks, and its detection in countries neighbouring the DRC is especially concerning, and one of the main reasons for the declaration of the PHEIC,” the World Health Organization (WHO) had noted in a statement on August 14, 2024.
PHEIC stands for ‘Public Health Emergency of International Concern’, which the WHO had declared for a second time on August 14, keeping in mind, “the upsurge of mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and a growing number of countries in Africa”.
In declaring the PHEIC, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had said, “The emergence of a new clade of mpox, its rapid spread in eastern DRC, and the reporting of cases in several neighbouring countries are very worrying. On top of outbreaks of other mpox clades in DRC and other countries in Africa, it’s clear that a coordinated international response is needed to stop these outbreaks and save lives.”
The WHO had first declared mpox as a PHEIC in 2022.
“This PHEIC determination is the second in two years relating to mpox. Caused by an Orthopoxvirus, mpox was first detected in humans in 1970, in the DRC. The disease is considered endemic to countries in central and west Africa,” the WHO statement of August 14, 2024 had noted.
“In July 2022, the multi-country outbreak of mpox was declared a PHEIC as it spread rapidly via sexual contact across a range of countries where the virus had not been seen before. That PHEIC was declared over in May 2023 after there had been a sustained decline in global cases,” it had added.
On August 15, Sweden became the first country located outside the African continent to report clade 1b. On August 22, Thailand confirmed a case of clade 1b.
Earlier this month, a 26-year-old resident of Hisar in Haryana tested positive for clade 2, which usually causes less severe infections.
India has reported 30 cases of the disease since the first declaration of PHEIC in 2022.
