The World Health Organization is again warning the world about mpox, declaring an outbreak in central Africa a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.
“A Public Health Emergency of International Concern is the highest level of alarm under international health law,” said W.H.O. Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on August 14, 2024.
This outbreak is of a different strain of mpox than the outbreak that caused an emergency in 2022. This outbreak is driven by clade Ib, which appears to be more infectious and deadly than the clade IIb strain from 2022. This year, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo alone, there have been around 18,000 suspected cases of mpox, many of them among children. There have been at least 600 deaths.
And clade Ib has gone beyond DRC.
“The detection and rapid spread of a new clade of mpox in eastern DRC, its detection in neighboring countries that had not previously reported mpox, and the potential for further spread within Africa and beyond is very worrying,” said Ghebreyesus.
There have been two reported cases of clade Ib outside of Africa, one in Sweden and one in Thailand, but both of the infected people picked up the virus in Africa. There have been no cases reported in the United States.
This, while the 2022 version of mpox still simmers around the world, with three cases this year in San Antonio, and maybe a dozen cases a month, nationwide, according to the CDC. While the outbreak in Africa is hitting children and sex workers the hardest, the 2022 version of the virus is spreading most often between men during intimate or sexual contact.
Because mpox can spread if you come in direct contact with the pox rash, the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District is urging people to avoid close, skin-to-skin contact with a person with an unidentified rash, and also to avoid large crowds where people are wearing minimal clothing, like at nightclubs or raves, which can be packed with people pushed close together. Also, be careful about sharing bedding or towels. The virus can linger on fabrics and on other fomites.
CDC and Metro Health are urging those who’ve been exposed to mpox or who are at risk for exposure, to get vaccinated. Metro Health offers mpox vaccines for free at its STI Control and Prevention Clinic and at Outreach events.
Africa faces a desperate shortage of vaccines, however, and is asking countries with extra to donate some. The US has so far donated 10,000 doses to Nigeria.
