BANGKOK: Thailand confirmed on Thursday (Aug 22) Asia’s first known case of a new, deadlier strain of mpox in a patient who had travelled to the country from Africa.
The Department of Disease Control said laboratory tests on the 66-year-old European had confirmed he was infected with mpox Clade 1b.
On Wednesday, the kingdom reported a suspected first case of the new strain of mpox, which the World Health Organization has declared a global public health emergency.
The patient arrived in Thailand on Aug 14 from an African country where it was spreading, the head of the Department of Disease Control Thongchai Keeratihattayakorn said on Wednesday.
He did not name the African country. The infected person was quarantined in hospital.
Mpox cases and deaths are surging in Africa, where outbreaks have been reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda since July.
The disease is caused by a virus transmitted by infected animals but passed from human to human through close physical contact. Symptoms include fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions.
While mpox has been known for decades, a new more deadly and more transmissible strain – known as Clade 1b – has driven the recent surge in cases.
Clade 1b causes death in about 3.6 per cent of cases, with children more at risk, according to the WHO.
Formerly called monkeypox, the virus was discovered in 1958 in Denmark, in monkeys kept for research.
DR Congo has reported more than 16,000 cases and 500 deaths this year.
