Sweden's public health agency issued a statement on Thursday indicating that a person has been diagnosed with mpox - formerly called monkeypox - caused by variant clade I. According to the Swedish agency, this is the first case of this variant to be diagnosed outside the African continent. The person would have been infected during a stay in a part of Africa where there is an outbreak of this variant of mpox, according to the statement. The announcement comes a day after the World Health Organisation declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
Brian Ferguson - variante mpox Suecia EN
Brian Ferguson
Associate Professor of Immunology, University of Cambridge
The appearance of a case mpox disease caused by clade 1 mpox virus in Sweden is clearly a concerning development. It is not surprising, given the severity and spread of the outbreak in Africa, that travel between continents has brought this case to Europe. There will likely be more here and in and other parts of the world as there are currently no mechanisms in place to stop imported cases of mpox happening. The timing of this case comes less than 24 hours after the WHO's PHEIC declaration and only 15 months after the WHO ended the previous mpox PHEIC in May 2023. The lack of activity in the intervening period has resulted in what could now become a new global outbreak. There should have been a greater effort to produce and distribute vaccines to the affected areas, but this has not happened. It is possible to address these problems but this requires rapid international co-operation.
Francois Balloux - variante mpox Suecia EN
Francois Balloux
Professor of Computational Systems Biology and Director, UCL Genetics Institute, UCL
The recent case of mpox detected in Sweden was likely diagnosed as clade I through whole genome sequencing. Whether the case belonged to the I or Ib lineage has not been released so far. The person who has been diagnosed in Sweden has been infected during a stay in a part of Africa where mpox is endemic. As such, there is no evidence for transmission in Europe at this stage. Given the sizeable number of recent mpox clade I cases in parts of Africa, it is not surprising that a case has been diagnosed in a European country. At this stage, Sweden is not taking additional measures beyond those already in place. It is to be expected that other imported cases of mpox clade I will be identified outside Africa over the coming months.
