As concerns mount about a type of mpox spreading across Africa that’s believed to cause more serious illness, infectious disease experts expressed cautious optimism that this branch of the virus would not spread as broadly in the U.S. or cause health impacts as severe.
The risk of this subtype of mpox to the U.S. could be mitigated by a number of factors, including immunity from vaccination and previous infection from the outbreak of a different variant that began in 2022; the lack of viral circulation in wild animals; and better health care access, living standards and public health.
On Wednesday, the World Health Organization reinstated the status of mpox (formerly monkeypox) as a public health emergency of international concern. This was in response to a large ongoing outbreak of clade I of mpox — a clade is an evolutionary branch — in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC, that has spread to other African nations. Sweden announced the first clade I case outside of Africa on Thursday.
“It was only a matter of time before we saw this extend beyond the African continent,” Dr. Boghuma Titanji, an infectious disease specialist at Emory University, said. In a statement issued Friday, Dr.
Pamela Rendi-Wagner, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control , said the agency had increased the risk level of clade I to the general European population from “very low” to “low.” “Due to the close links between Europe and Africa,” Rendi-Wagne.