Mpox, formerly monkeypox, declared a global health emergency by World Health Organization

Mpox, which is a viral illness caused by the monkeypox virus, has been declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization.

The WHO said on Aug. 14 the emergency was declared due to the “ongoing upsurge” of mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in a growing number of countries in Africa.

Common symptoms of mpox are a skin rash or mucosal lesions, which can last two to four weeks, according to the WHO, accompanied by fever, headache, muscle aches, back pain, low energy and swollen lymph nodes.

It can be transmitted through physical contact with someone who is infectious, contaminated materials or infected animals.

Mpox is part of the same virus family that causes smallpox, USA Today reported, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but it isn’t related to chicken pox. It was formerly known as monkeypox, according to the BBC.

Discovered in 1958, the virus originally was named monkeypox because that’s the animal it was first discovered in, according to USA Today — not because monkeys are the source of infections. However, the disease was renamed to “avoid the stigma that associated it with monkeys,” USA Today said.

The surge in cases of a new subtype of the virus has prompted concerns about a possible lockdown similar to the covid-19 pandemic, Today reported.

There are three different types, or branches, of the mpox virus, which are labeled by their “clade,” according to the BBC:

• Clade 1a is causing most of the infections in the west and north of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is the outbreak that has been going on for more than a decade. It is spread mostly by eating infected wildlife known as bushmeat. Those who get sick can pass the virus onto people they come into close contact with and children have been particularly affected.

• Clade 1b is the new branch of the mpox family and is causing the outbreaks in the east of the DRC and neighboring countries. This is being spread along trucking routes with drivers having heterosexual sex with exploited sex workers, with infected people also passing it onto children through close contact.

• Clade 2 is the mpox outbreak that went around the world in 2022 and again had a strong connection with sex, this time predominantly affecting gay, bisexual and other men, as well as their close contacts. This outbreak is not over.

However, at this time, Today said the risk of the current mpox outbreak spreading to people in the U.S. remains very low, according to experts, but the resurgence of mpox in multiple countries in Africa has raised alarm among scientists.

The mpox outbreak has already spread to at least 12 other countries in the African region, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a release.

This is the second time the WHO has declared mpox a health emergency in two years — the first was in response to a multi-country outbreak in 2022, which left over 90,000 people sick, including over 33,000 in the U.S., according to the CDC.

In a health alert issued on Aug. 7, the CDC said the risk of mpox importation into the United States was “very low” — due to the limited number of travelers and lack of direct commercial flights from the DRC and its neighboring countries.

There are vaccines available and approved, such as the JYNNEOS vaccine, which is a two-dose series that provides protection against both Clade 1 and Clade 2, according to USA Today, and it’s highly effective, according to the CDC.

Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said “there would be absolutely no reason to take that kind of measure” when asked about the potential for mpox lockdowns, Today reported.

Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, agreed in an Aug. 20 post on the social media platform X.

“Mpox is not the new covid,” he said.

As we tackle #mpox as a public health emergency of international concern for the second time in 2 years, I want to convey 3 basic messages today on behalf of @WHO_Europe.

Message 1: mpox is not the “new #COVID”.

Regardless of whether it’s mpox clade I, behind the ongoing… https://t.co/qL4YO1X2pd

— Hans Kluge (@hans_kluge) August 20, 2024

“We have to avoid the trap of thinking this is going to be covid all over again, and we’re going to have lockdowns — or that this will play out like mpox did in 2022,” said Dr. Jake Dunning, an mpox scientist and doctor who has treated mpox patients in the UK, the BBC reported.