What we know about the new mpox outbreak

A surging mpox outbreak in Africa was declared an emergency by the World Health Organisation (WHO) this week and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), an EU agency, on Friday said more imported cases to Europe were “highly likely”.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) declared its first-ever Public Health Emergency of Continental Security (PHECS) for the deadly disease.

It is the second time the WHO has issued its public health emergency warning since the epidemic first spread around the world in 2022.

Now the virus has crossed from its epicentre in the Democratic Republic of Congo to other African nations and was detected this week for the first time in Sweden and Pakistan.

The disease, formerly known as monkeypox, was first detected in humans in the DRC in 1970.

There are two subtypes of the virus: clade 1 and clade 2.

The deadlier clade 1 has been endemic in the Congo Basin in central Africa for decades.

The less severe clade 2 has become endemic in parts of West Africa.

Mpox can spread human-to-human through sexual or close physical contact. Symptoms include fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions.

The virus gained international prominence in May 2022, when a less deadly strain called clade 2b spread around the world, mostly affecting gay and bisexual men.

Between January 2022 and June 2024, 208 deaths and more than 99,000 mpox cases were recorded across 116 countries, according to the WHO.

The latest surge has been of the deadlier clade 1 — and its new mutated variant.

The new strain, called clade 1b, was first detected among sex workers in the DRC in September 2023.

Sweden this week reported the first case of the variant outside Africa, and the EU’s health