New variant of Mpox “worrying Portugal’s experts”

Lisbon: With health experts powering the narrative of another world health emergency, Lusa reports that the new variant, dubbed Clade 1, has not been identified in any of the cases reported in Portugal.

However, public health doctor Gustavo Tato Borges – a face many will remember from the years of the pandemic – has warned that “it is practically impossible for this disease not to reach Portugal”.

Thus Dr Borges is advocating all the vigilance and contingency plans possible, so that authorities can swing into action “when we identify a susceptible or probable case of this disease”.

In 2022, when Mpox was known as monkeypox (then quickly destigmatised by removing the ‘onkey’), it was essentially restricted to ‘men who have sex with men’. As it is a virus that is endemic in Africa, and men who have sex with men also appear to have sex with women, it has been mutating, and is now much more dangerous for people living in unsanitary conditions, and suffering from lack of correct nourishment.

Thus, the fact that the virus is now being flagged in Europe does not mean it will necessarily be as potentially dangerous as it has been in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Dr Borges has described a mortality rate “of between 3 and 4%”, but that is the effect on the populations in habitually challenged areas of central Africa.

Here, between June 1, 2023 and the end of July this year, Portugal registered 244 cases of Mpox, only three of which were flagged since May. None of those cases lead to death – but as Dr Borges has stressed, they were all of the Clade I IIb variant.

The difference between Clade I IIb and Clade I is that the former transmits through ‘close contact’ but not sexual contact, and is therefore easier to contract.

Another difference is that the skin lesions that develop (the pox part of the disease) can be ‘all over the body’, instead of simply confined to chest, hands and feet.

The positive side to this developing story is that there is a vaccine available, and this will be offered to “ the population most at risk of infection”, which as yet has not been completely identified. It may be that it is confined to the very old and immuno-compromised – which is what many believe should have been the yardstick for the vaccines created to combat Covid-19.

For now, the country ‘waits’: Sweden has already reported one case of the new variant; social media is bristling, with ‘experts’ suggesting “rapid international spread (…) dozens of (potentially) undetected cases in Europe” and warning “if we remain complacent, there’s a risk of a major global outbreak” while lay commentators who weathered the pandemic are more relaxed, and sharing humorous advice: “Please take care, you may have monkeypox and not even realise it. You may be A-chimptomatic”.