The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned doctors Wednesday to be alert for signs of a more severe variant of mpox, which is currently spreading widely in parts of Africa.
The agency’s warning came hours after World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu tweeted that he would convene a group of advisers to determine whether to declare the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. The committee will meet as soon as possible, Tedros said.
There are currently no reported cases of the strain, called clade 1, outside of Central and East Africa, the CDC said in its alert. However, because of the risk of further spread, the agency recommends that clinicians in the U.S. consider mpox in patients who have recently traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo or a neighboring country (Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda or Zambia) and have symptoms of mpox.
Mpox, formerly called monkeypox, is a virus that causes fever, headache, muscle aches, and painful sores on the skin. It is spread from person to person through close skin-to-skin contact. It can be fatal.
The latest mpox strain is different from the virus that circulated globally in 2022, which primarily affected men who have sex with men. Those cases have declined significantly in the U.S.
The CDC said in its alert that outbreaks in some provinces in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been linked to sexual contact.
In other parts of the country, however, patients have gotten sick through contact with infected animals, household transmission or through patient care, the CDC said. A large proportion of cases have been reported in children younger than 15.
“Most reported cases in known endemic provinces continue to occur in children under 15 years of age,” the World Health Organization wrote on its website June 14. “Infants and children under five years of age are at greatest risk of severe illness and death.”
Clade 1 is worrisome because of its severity. Nearly 4% of mpox cases in clade 1 are fatal, compared to less than 1% of the 2022 subtype, called clade 2.
According to the CDC, the available MPOX vaccine from pharmaceutical company Jynneos is effective for both clade 1 and clade 2 of MPOX.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com