WASHINGTON: Health officials in Britain have detected the country’s first confirmed human case of a new strain of mpox that has been spreading throughout Africa, United Press International reported.
The UK Health Security Agency announced the detection of the Clade Ib mpox infection in a statement on Wednesday, noting that the “risk to the UK population remains low.”
The patient was not identified, but the health agency said the person had recently travelled to African nations seeing community spread of the disease.
Close contacts with the patient are being reached by the agency and partner organizations for testing and vaccination as needed, it said.
“We are working rapidly to trace close contacts and reduce the risk of any potential spread,” Susan Hopkins, chief medical adviser at UKHSA, said. “In accordance with established protocols, investigations are underway to learn how the individual acquired the infection and to assess whether there are any further associated cases.”
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Mpox, previously called monkeypox, is a viral illness transmitted through close contact with an infected person.
Common symptoms include a skin rash or mucosal lesions, which can be accompanied by fever, headache, muscle aches, back pain, low energy and swollen lymph nodes. It can be fatal in some cases, and there are vaccines.
Britain experienced an outbreak of mpox in 2022.
As of July of that year, there were 1,517 confirmed cases of the virus, with a high proportion of those infected being London residents, primarily men who have sex with other men.
Clade Ib mpox is a different strain than the one responsible for the 2022 outbreak and is currently spreading in central and eastern Africa.
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According to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been 45,674 suspected and 9,298 confirmed cases of the virus this year in several African nations, though it did not specify which strain. There have been 1,014 deaths. The vast majority of the cases were reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
African health officials said in mid-September that the Clade Ib strain was first reported in the DRC last year, and has spread to nonendemic countries Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Thailand and Sweden.
Last week, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control announced Germany detected a confirmed human case of the clade Ib virus on Oct 18., with the infection acquired abroad.
Medical experts responded to news of the patient in Britain by saying it was not unexpected.
“This is an unsurprising event and likely will not be the only time this happens in the UK,“ Dr. Brian Ferguson, associate professor of immunology at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement.
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Prof. Jonathan Ball, deputy vice-chancellor and professor of molecular virology at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, added that while the low number of cases detected outside Africa mean the virus cannot be ignored, he found it unlikely for extensive breakouts to occur in nations with developed medical systems.
“But it is a reminder that we need to do more to remove health inequalities around the world,” he said.
Last month, Britain purchased more than 150,000 doses of mpox vaccine from Bavarian Nordic in preparation of possible clade Ib mpox cases.
