After identifying the first case of the new mpox variant clade Ib in the UK last week, authorities have now detected another two cases in household contacts of the original patient, according to the Health Security Agency (UKHSA), bringing the total number of confirmed cases to three.
The government agency said the risk to the population remained low, reports Reuters.
UKHSA said last week that the first case, in a patient who had recently travelled to affected countries in Africa, had been detected in London and the individual had been transferred to a specialist hospital.
The two new patients are also under specialist care in the city.
Nineteen African countries have seen more than 48 000 suspected mpox cases, including 1 048 deaths so far this year, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), with cases in the continent surging by 500% from last year.
Mpox clade Ib has also been reported in Germany, Sweden, India and Thailand, CIDRAP reports. It is a different form of the virus from clade II, which spread globally in 2022, largely among men who have sex with men.
Mpox is usually mild but it can kill. Clade Ib is thought to cause more severe disease than clade II.
Different from the clade II strain spreading globally, the novel clade 1b virus was detected amid the large outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in April, where it is circulating with other clades.
Children vaccines
Meanwhile, Bavarian Nordic has announced that the first patients have been vaccinated in a clinical trial to assess the safety and immunogenicity of the Jynneos vaccine in children aged two to 11-years-old. The trial is expected to enrol 460 participants, mainly in the DRC but with some sites to be included from Uganda.
Additional ammunition in the battle against the disease will be coming from the WHO, which has added two more mpox PCR tests to its emergency use listing. They include Xpert Mpox from Cephid, which can be used on GeneXpert systems and deliver a result in 40 minutes. The other is the cobas MPXV assay, developed by Roche for use on cobas 6800/8800 systems.
The test can detect both mpox clades and deliver a result in less than two hours.
Reuters article – Britain detects two more cases of new mpox variant (Open access)
CIDRAP article – UK reports imported clade 1b mpox case (Open access)
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Germany IDs first case of new mpox variant
Most mpox cases can’t be tracked, says Africa CDC
Mpox: ‘Nobody is safe until Africa is safe’