An international team of epidemiologists found a mutant strain of monkeypox virus (MPXV) in Kamituga, a densely populated and poor mining town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The virus, a descendant of the clade 1 MPXV strain, which kills up to 10% of those infected, has “pandemic potential,” according to the authors declared in a preprint article deposited this Sunday, April 14 on Medrxiv.
“Without intervention, this localized outbreak in Kamituga has the potential to spread nationally and internationally,” the authors noted. The new variant of the monkeypox virus, called ‘clade 1b’, appears to be as lethal as its predecessor, but has evolved to become even more infectious and better evades detection tests.
The researchers explained that clade I MPXV, which is prevalent in Central Africa, is characterized by severe disease and high mortality, while clade II is limited to West Africa and is associated with milder disease.
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The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control recently reported that, over the past year, the DRC has been struggling to contain ‘clade 1’ of the virus. The agency pointed out that from 2023 to March 29, 2024, the African country reported a total of 18,922 suspected cases of MPXV, including 1,007 deaths. So far in 2024, 4,488 cases have been reported in the country and a total of 279 deaths have been reported.
The new variant is believed to have emerged recently, sometime between July and September 2023, first in animals and then jumping to humans. As it spread in Kamituga, it acquired new mutations that helped it spread. So far, 108 cases have been confirmed, and almost 30% of them were among sex workers, suggesting that the virus is spreading in a similar way to the mutant variant that caused a major outbreak in 2022.
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