India Reports First Mpox Clade 1 Case as WHO Declares Global Public Health Emergency
India has reported its first case of the Mpox clade 1 strain, a variant that prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare it a public health emergency last month. Official sources revealed that the Mpox clade 1 strain was detected in a 38-year-old man from Kerala’s Malappuram district, who had recently returned from the United Arab Emirates. The patient is currently in stable condition and under observation, according to reports from PTI.
“This was the first case of the current strain that led the WHO to declare Mpox a public health emergency for the second time last month,” an official source confirmed.
The strain detected in this case belongs to the Clade 1b category, which is endemic to Central Africa and known to cause more severe illness than other variants. It is also spreading rapidly, which contributed to the WHO’s decision to issue the public health emergency alert after hundreds of cases were recorded across African nations.
Manisha Verma, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, confirmed that the Mpox case detected in Kerala last week was of the Clade 1b strain, as reported by news agency ANI. The previous case of Mpox in India was of a different strain—Clade 2—which was detected in a 26-year-old man from Hisar, Haryana earlier this month.
Since the WHO’s declaration of Mpox as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in 2022, India has reported 30 cases of the virus. Clade 1b, the strain currently causing concern, has become endemic in Central Africa, and health officials are monitoring its spread closely due to its potential for severe illness.
Earlier in the day, the WHO reported over 30,000 suspected Mpox cases from Africa this year, with the majority occurring in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where testing supplies have been exhausted. The U.N. health body also confirmed that over 800 deaths from suspected Mpox have occurred across the continent, with neighboring Burundi facing a growing outbreak.
