The Swedish government confirmed on Thursday the first case of the new variant of monkeypox (renamed mpox) outside Africa. Clade 1B, the variant that is apparently more transmissible and lethal, has been spreading for months in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has jumped to other African countries and is now being detected for the first time outside the continent, according to Jakob Forssmed, Swedish Minister of Health, according to Reuters.
This confirmation comes one day after the World Health Organization declared a health emergency of international concern, announced on Wednesday. The ECDC has already reported that it is working to assess the threat on European soil and that it will “soon publish an updated risk assessment.” The last one, from two weeks ago, assessed the risk as “very low,” but that information note is no longer on its website.
The EU Health Security Committee will meet next Monday to analyse the spread of the virus. And in Spain, a day later, the Ministry of Health has called the autonomous communities, which will analyse what measures to take within the national territory, where the situation has not changed since the outbreak in Africa and clade 1B has not been detected in the country.
Since the outbreak began in 2022 (which triggered the first international health alert for mpox), 8,104 cases have been reported in Spain, the vast majority, 7,521, occurring that same year. In 2024, 264 mpox infections have been reported to the National Epidemiological Surveillance Network (Renave), the majority in men with a median age of 37 years and born in Spain. In the last month, cases were reported in Madrid (116), Andalusia (67), Catalonia (22), Balearic Islands (10), Valencian Community (11), Galicia (6), Castilla-La Mancha (6), Basque Country (5), Castilla y León (3), Canary Islands (3), Extremadura (1) and Murcia (1).
The problem right now is mainly in Africa. And the health emergency declared by the WHO is aimed more at dealing with the spread of the virus on that continent, a mechanism that does not oblige states to take any specific measures, but that gives governments a warning, facilitates international coordination and speeds up the purchase and distribution of vaccines, bypassing some bureaucratic processes that tend to delay them.
According to WHO officials on Wednesday, the decision was taken unanimously by the emergency committee for several reasons: the rapid spread of a new variant, the detection in countries that had never previously recorded cases of mpox, the risk that the WHO sees in the spread beyond Africa and the impact on vulnerable people, such as children and pregnant women.
In this wave of transmission in RCD, children are the main victims: 70% of positive cases are under 15 years old, and 39% are under five years old, who account for 62% of deaths (the virus has always been more dangerous for them). However, the WHO wants to strengthen surveillance to fully understand how the virus is behaving, its epidemiological patterns and how and where infections are occurring.
So far this year, 15,000 cases have been recorded in Africa (more than double the number this time last year) and 461 deaths from mpox. This would represent a fatality rate of 3%, which is very high, but it is likely to be much lower in reality, as the capacity to detect and diagnose cases in the affected countries is low.
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