Getty ImagesThe rapid spread of mpox – what used to be called monkeypox – in parts of Africa has been declared a global emergency.A new form of the virus is at the heart of concerns, but there still remain huge unanswered questions.Is it more contagious? We don’t know. How deadly is it? We don’t have the data. Is this going to be a pandemic?“We have to avoid the trap of thinking this is going to be Covid all over again and we’re going to have lockdowns – or that this will play out like mpox did in 2022,” says Dr Jake Dunning, an mpox scientist and doctor who has treated mpox patients in the UK.To assess the threat – despite the uncertainty – we first need to realise this is not one mpox outbreak, but three.They are all happening at the same time, but affecting different groups of people and behaving differently.They are labelled by their “clade” – essentially which branch of the mpox virus family tree they come from.Clade 1a is causing most of the infections in the west and north of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is the outbreak that has been going on for more than a decade. It is spread mostly by eating infected wildlife known as bushmeat. Those who get sick can pass the virus onto people they come into close contact with and children have been particularly affected.Clade 1b is the new branch of the mpox family and is causing the outbreaks in the east of the DRC and neighbouring countries. This is being spread along trucking routes with drivers having heterosexual sex with exploited sex workers, with infected people also passing it onto children through close contact.Clade 2 is the mpox outbreak that went around the world in 2022 and again had a strong connection with sex, this time predominantly affecting gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men communities (98.6% were men in the UK) as well as their close contacts. This outbreak is not over.Truckers and sex workersThe World Health Organization labelled Clade 1b as one of the main reasons for it declaring a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. This strain has spread to countries previously unaffected by mpox – Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.It was first reported this year, but genetic analysis has traced its origins back to September 2023 in the gold-mining city of Kamituga, in the Congolese province of Sout …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnGetty ImagesThe rapid spread of mpox – what used to be called monkeypox – in parts of Africa has been declared a global emergency.A new form of the virus is at the heart of concerns, but there still remain huge unanswered questions.Is it more contagious? We don’t know. How deadly is it? We don’t have the data. Is this going to be a pandemic?“We have to avoid the trap of thinking this is going to be Covid all over again and we’re going to have lockdowns – or that this will play out like mpox did in 2022,” says Dr Jake Dunning, an mpox scientist and doctor who has treated mpox patients in the UK.To assess the threat – despite the uncertainty – we first need to realise this is not one mpox outbreak, but three.They are all happening at the same time, but affecting different groups of people and behaving differently.They are labelled by their “clade” – essentially which branch of the mpox virus family tree they come from.Clade 1a is causing most of the infections in the west and north of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is the outbreak that has been going on for more than a decade. It is spread mostly by eating infected wildlife known as bushmeat. Those who get sick can pass the virus onto people they come into close contact with and children have been particularly affected.Clade 1b is the new branch of the mpox family and is causing the outbreaks in the east of the DRC and neighbouring countries. This is being spread along trucking routes with drivers having heterosexual sex with exploited sex workers, with infected people also passing it onto children through close contact.Clade 2 is the mpox outbreak that went around the world in 2022 and again had a strong connection with sex, this time predominantly affecting gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men communities (98.6% were men in the UK) as well as their close contacts. This outbreak is not over.Truckers and sex workersThe World Health Organization labelled Clade 1b as one of the main reasons for it declaring a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. This strain has spread to countries previously unaffected by mpox – Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.It was first reported this year, but genetic analysis has traced its origins back to September 2023 in the gold-mining city of Kamituga, in the Congolese province of Sout …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
