A dangerous strain of mpox that is killing children and causing miscarriages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most transmissible yet and could spread internationally, scientists have warned.
The virus appears to be spreading from person to person via both sexual and non-sexual contact, in places ranging from brothels to schools.
Hundreds of people with the disease, formerly known as monkeypox, have attended hospital in the mining town of Kamituga, South Kivu province, in what is likely to be the “tip of the iceberg” of a larger outbreak, doctors say.
The new DRC outbreak is a mutated form of clade I mpox. Doctors report a fatality rate of about 5% in adults and 10% in children, as well as high rates of miscarriages among pregnant women.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A dangerous strain of mpox that is killing children and causing miscarriages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most transmissible yet and could spread internationally, scientists have warned.
Hundreds of people with the disease, formerly known as monkeypox, have attended hospital in the mining town of Kamituga, South Kivu province, in what is likely to be the “tip of the iceberg” of a larger outbreak, doctors say.
Clade I has historically been found in people who eat infected bushmeat, with transmission largely confined to the affected household.
At a briefing for journalists, Trudie Lang, professor of global health research at Oxford University, said that when the DRC outbreak was detected last September scientists had assumed it would be clade II, because of the sexual transmission, until genetic testing revealed it belonged to the more virulent strain.
South Kivu is on the border with Burundi and Rwanda and close to Uganda, and there is frequent cross-border travel by local people.
Lang said it was unclear how many asymptomatic or mild cases there were, with the long incubation time of the virus increasing the risk of transmission before people realised they were sick.
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