Earlier this week, a World Health Organization (WHO) official stressed that the mpox virus is not the new COVID-19, because we know how to handle its spread, but the current outbreak is steadily growing, alarming health experts. It involves two different versions of the mpox virus: one that caused a global outbreak in 2022-2023 and a new, mutated and potentially more deadly strain.
So far, most of the cases of the deadlier strain, known as clade Ib, have been on the African content, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo. On Thursday, Thailand became the second country outside Africa to report a clade 1b case, following Sweden last week. According to BBC, the infected 66-year-old European man had residency in Thailand and arrived in Bangkok from an unnamed African country on 14 August.
