(Islamabad) The strain of MPOX detected in a patient in Pakistan last week is not the same as the virus currently raging in Africa, the country’s health authorities said on Monday.
Pakistan announced last Friday that it had diagnosed a case of MPOX in a 34-year-old patient “coming from a Gulf country”. Genetic sequencing of the strain has just been carried out.
“The virus belongs to clade 2b subtype,” Pakistan’s health ministry said in a statement.
“Currently the epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is primarily associated with Clade 1b. It should be noted that to date, no case of Clade 1b has been reported in Pakistan,” the ministry continued.
Last Thursday, Sweden announced that it had recorded a case of subtype clade 1b, the same new strain of mpox that has appeared in the DRC since September 2023, and the first case outside Africa.
The resurgence of MPOX in the DRC, which is also affecting Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, has prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a public health emergency of international concern, the highest alarm. The DRC has recorded at least 16,000 cases, including 548 deaths.
Formerly known as monkeypox, the virus was discovered in 1958 in Denmark, in monkeys bred for research. Then in 1970 for the first time in humans in what is now the DRC.
MPOX is a viral disease that spreads from animals to humans but is also transmitted through close physical contact. The disease causes fever, muscle aches and skin lesions.