A day after Sweden reported the first case of mpox outside of Africa containing a new, more severe strain of the virus that has killed hundreds in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan announced on Friday that it has confirmed a case.
The World Health Organization on Wednesday issued the highest alert it can for a public health emergency—a public health emergency of worldwide concern—in response to the mpox epidemic in Africa, which has also hit Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda.
Sweden’s Public Health Agency told AFP on Thursday that it had registered a case of the Clade 1b subclade — the same new strain that has surged in the DRC since September 2023, and the first such infection outside the African continent, according to the agency.
The patient was infected during a visit to “the part of Africa where there is a major outbreak of mpox Clade 1”, epidemiologist Magnus Gisslen said in a statement from the agency.
The mpox strain that caused the case in Pakistan was not immediately known on Friday, the Ministry of Health said in a statement.
“The affected person has come from a Gulf country,” the statement said.
The 34-year-old patient from Pakistan is “the first confirmed case we have this year” of mpox, according to Irshad Roghani, the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s director of public health.
“For genetic sequencing of the strain, we have sent samples to Islamabad,” he added.
