Mpox scare: Thailand confirms Asia’s first case of new ‘deadly’ Clade 1b strain amid global ‘health emergency’

Thailand reported a case of the highly transmissible Clade 1b strain of Mpox this week amid growing concerns about a global outbreak. The case — the first to be reported from Asia — comes mere days after Sweden reported the first such case outside Africa.

“The test results confirm that he is infected with the Clade 1b strain of monkeypox, which is the first case diagnosed in Thailand, but this man is likely infected from an endemic country,” officials told Reuters.

The infected individual is a 66-year-old European man who arrived in Thailand last week from an unspecified African country where the disease was spreading.

The World Health Organisation declared the Mpox surge a public health emergency of international concern earlier this month (its highest alert level) as cases soared in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Now the virus has crossed from its epicentre in the Democratic Republic of Congo to other African nations and was detected this week for the first time in Sweden and Pakistan.

The highly transmissible Clade 1b strain of the virus has killed hundreds of people in the country and recently crossed from its epicentre into other African nations. Cases belonging to the ‘regular’ strain of the virus were also detected in Pakistan and the Philippines recently.

There are two subtypes of mpox: the more virulent and deadlier Clade 1, endemic in the Congo Basin in central Africa; and Clade 2, endemic in West Africa. Clade 1b is a new offshoot of Clade 1, which is now called Clade 1a. The Clade 1b outbreak in northeastern DRC was first detected in September last year and is spreading rapidly.

Clade 1a traditionally has outbreaks resulting from infections from sick animals, with some limited follow-on transmission between humans at the household level, or within communities. However experts have not “isolated or detected zoonotic transmission of Clade 1b” — leading to the belief that it is circulating exclusively within the human population." Experts are trying to work out if there is a difference in disease severity between Clades 1a and 1b.

(With inputs from agencies)