A new variant virus has been discovered in New York, as reported by Reuters. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Wednesday that an individual in New York had been diagnosed with clade1b mpox and was currently in isolation. Efforts are being made to identify individuals who may have had contact with the patient. The CDC mentioned that the patient’s condition was showing signs of improvement even without receiving specific treatments for mpox. The New York State Department of Health also confirmed the first case of this new mpox strain on Tuesday, marking it as the fourth known case in the United States, with previous cases reported in California, Georgia, and New Hampshire.
According to the CDC, the individual diagnosed in New York had recently traveled from East Africa and was tested based on their travel history and symptoms. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared mpox a global public health emergency for the second time in two years back in August, following an outbreak of the viral infection in the Democratic Republic of Congo that subsequently spread to neighboring countries. Mpox is known to be a viral infection that spreads through close contact and typically manifests as flu-like symptoms accompanied by pus-filled lesions. While the infection is usually mild, it can potentially be fatal in certain cases.
This information was reported by Christy Santhosh in Bengaluru, with editing by Anil D’Silva.
