The World Health Organization (WHO) is ordering governments worldwide to prepare to implement unprecedented new lockdowns due to the new mutant monkeypox strain, which it claims will transform into a global pandemic.
The new strain of the virus is much worse than the one seen in 2022, according to WHO officials.
The virus is also reportedly “spreading” without any sexual contact.
However, while confirmed cases are currently confined to central Africa, health officials say the disease is about to spread worldwide.
The head of the committee said that a “public health emergency of international concern” is needed for the new strain.
“The current upsurge of mpox in parts of Africa, along with the spread of a new sexually transmissible strain of the monkeypox virus, is an emergency, not only for Africa, but for the entire globe. Mpox, originating in Africa, was neglected there, and later caused a global outbreak in 2022. It is time to act decisively to prevent history from repeating itself,” Committee Chair Professor Dimie Ogoina said.
Initially, all of the confirmed cases of the “clade 1b” strain were limited to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
However, in recent days, over 100 cases have been confirmed in neighboring Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda.
In the past month, over 100 laboratory-confirmed cases of clade 1b have been reported in four countries neighboring the DRC that have not reported pox before: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda. Experts believe the true number of cases to be higher as a large proportion of clinically compatible cases have not been tested.
HO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that “the potential for further spread within Africa and beyond is very worrying”…
“The detection and rapid spread of a new clade of mpox in eastern DRC, its detection in neighboring countries that had not previously reported mpox, and the potential for further spread within Africa and beyond is very worrying,” Tedros said during the briefing.
The strain of mpox spreading now (clade I) is more serious than the type we saw two years ago (clade II), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains. Clade I spreads more easily and could kill up to 10% of people who contract it. On the other hand, more than 99% of people who caught the clade II version in 2022 survived.
The Hill reported:
The strain of mpox spreading now (clade I) is more serious than the type we saw two years ago (clade II), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains. Clade I spreads more easily and could kill up to 10% of people who contract it. On the other hand, more than 99% of people who caught the clade II version in 2022 survived. During the global outbreak of mpox in 2022, gay and bisexual men made up the vast majority of cases and the virus was mostly spread through close contact, including sex. But with this outbreak in Congo, a majority of cases and deaths are in children. The reasons for the difference aren’t entirely clear. It could be because kids are more susceptible, said Dr. Boghuma Titanji, an infectious diseases expert at Emory University. Social factors, like overcrowding and exposure to parents who caught the disease, could also be at play.
Business Insider reports the virus can also spread without any sexual contact at all.
It began spreading through sexual transmission, via the local sex work industry, according to the researchers. However, they said the new virus has also spread within households, between mothers and their children, and there have even been cases of person-to-person spread outside households and without sexual contact.
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The WHO now has a total of 37 different diseases on its list of “priority pathogens”
Lassa Fever
Argentine Hemorrhagic Fever
Cholera
Plague
Shigellosis
Salmonella
Pneumoniae
MERS; Middle East Respiratory Virus
SARS; Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
Ebola
Marburg virus
Zika virus
Dengue fever
Yellow fever
Tick-borne encephalitis
West Nile Virus
Hantavirus
Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic Fever
Bird flu (H1 to H10)
Swine flu (H1 to H3)
Nipah virus
SFTS Fever
Rift Valley Fever
Smallpox
Pox virus
Monkeypox
Chikungunya virus
Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis
Pathogen X
Adenovirus
Adenovirus 14
Hand, foot and mouth
Lentivirus
Borna disease virus
Hepatitis C
Hepatitis E
HerpesHPVParvovirus
