London.- Swedish health officials said Thursday they have identified the first case of a person with the more infectious form of mpox, first detected in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a day after the World Health Organization declared outbreaks of the virus there and elsewhere in Africa a global emergency.
Sweden’s public health agency said in a statement that the patient recently sought medical care in Stockholm.
“In this case, a person became infected during a stay in the part of Africa where a major outbreak of (the most infectious form of monkeypox) occurred,” the agency said.
Magnus Gisslen, a state epidemiologist working for Sweden’s health agency, said the person had been treated and given “rules of conduct.”
“The fact that a patient with mpox receives treatment in the country has no influence on the risk for the general population,” Swedish authorities said, adding that experts estimate the risk to be “very low.” However, they indicated that imported cases may still occasionally occur.
Earlier this year, scientists reported the emergence of a new variant of the more lethal form of monkeypox, which can kill up to 10% of people, in a Congolese mining town, and feared it could spread more easily. MPox is spread mainly through close contact with infected people, including sexually.
The WHO said there have been more than 14,000 cases and 524 deaths in more than a dozen countries across Africa this year, already exceeding the figures for the previous year.
So far, more than 96% of all cases and deaths have occurred in a single country: Congo.
Given the resources available in Sweden and other wealthy countries to stop mpox, scientists suspect that if new outbreaks linked to Congo are identified, transmission could be halted relatively quickly.
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