NBC News
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday issued an alert urging doctors to watch for signs of a more severe strain of Mox, formerly called monkeypox, that is now spreading in parts of Africa.
The agency’s alert came hours after World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu posted on social media that he would convene a group of advisors to determine whether the monkeypox outbreak should be declared a public health emergency of international concern.
The WHO chief added that the committee will meet as soon as possible.
In its alert, the CDC reported that so far there have been no reported cases of the strain, called clade 1outside of central and eastern Africa. However, because of the risk of further spread, the agency recommends that U.S. physicians consider the possibility of contracting the disease in patients who are symptomatic and have recently traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda or Zambia.
Mpox, which was previously known as monkeypox In English, it is a virus that causes fever, headaches, muscle aches, and painful boils on the skin. It is spread from person to person through close skin-to-skin contact. It can be fatal.
The latest mpox strain It is different from the virus that circulated globally in 2022. Those cases have decreased significantly in the United States.
The CDC said in the alert that outbreaks in some provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo have been associated with sexual contact.
However, in other parts of the country, patients have become ill through contact with infected animals or through household transmission and medical care, the CDC said. The agency added that A high proportion of cases have been reported in children under 15 years of age.
“The majority of reported cases in known endemic provinces continue to be among children under 15 years of age,” the World Health Organization wrote on its website on June 14. “Infants and children under five years of age are at highest risk of severe disease and death.”
Clade 1 is of concern due to its severity. Nearly 4% of mpox cases turn out to be fatalcompared with less than 1% of the 2022 subtype, called clade 2.
The mpox vaccine that is found available from drug maker Jynneos, is effective for both clade 1 and clade 2, according to the CDC.
