An infection with the new mpox variant clade 1b has been detected in Germany for the first time, according to the Robert Koch Institute for public health.
The institute said in a statement on Tuesday the case was from an overseas transmission, and detected on October 18.
“The RKI currently considers the risk to the health of the general population in Germany to be low,” it said, adding it was monitoring the situation closely and would adapt its assessment if needed.
Germany’s case is the second to be recorded in Europe after a severe outbreak of the mpox strain in Africa earlier this year raised alarm.
Sweden was the first country to be linked to the African clade 1b outbreak outside the continent on August 16.
Pakistan, Thailand and the Philippines are the only other nations with reported cases outside Africa.
A day before the Swedish case was confirmed, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared mpox a global public health emergency, its highest level of alarm over the spread, amid the infection’s rapid spread from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to multiple neighbouring countries.
At least a dozen nations, including Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, were impacted, none of which had previously detected mpox.
Between January and the time of the declaration in August, more than 15,600 mpox cases and 537 deaths had been reported in the DRC alone.
Highly transmissible variant
Mpox, a viral disease related to smallpox that causes fever, body aches, swollen lymph nodes and a rash that forms into blisters, has two main subtypes — clade 1 and clade 2.
Clade 1 mpox tends to cause a higher number of severe infections and a higher mortality rate than clade 2 mpox, according to US health officials.
From May 2022, clade 2 spread across 115 non-endemic countries over the world, mostly affecting gay and bisexual men in Europe and the United States, leading the WHO to declare an international public health emergency that July.
Vaccination and awareness drives in many countries helped stem the number of worldwide cases and the WHO lifted the emergency in May 2023 after reporting 140 deaths out of roughly 87,400 cases.
The clade 1b strain emerged in the DRC last year.
It appears to spread more easily through routine close contact, including sexual contact.
ABC/wires
