New Mpox Variant Clade lb Mutating Rapidly, Says Expert. What's Next?

London: Experts are studying the new strain of mpox amid its breakout beyond the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Several reports have emerged claiming that the virus is evolving more rapidly than expected, especially in areas where scientists lack the funding or equipment to track it. There are several unknown aspects of the virus itself, such as its severity, how it is transmitted and the complicated response, scientists in US, and Europe told Reuters.

Mutating More Rapidly, say Experts

This comes as a new strain of the virus, clade lb, which gained the world's largest attention, prompted the World Health Organisation (WHO) to declare a new health emergency.

According to experts, the clade lb is a mutated version of clade l, a form of mpox spread by contact with infected animals that has been endemic in Congo for decades.

The virus typically causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions and can even kill.

As per WHO, Congo has had over 18,000 suspected clade I and clade Ib mpox cases, reported 615 deaths this year. Furthermore, there have also been 222 confirmed clade Ib cases in four African countries in the last month, plus a case each in Sweden and Thailand in people who have a travel history in Africa.

Dr Dimie Ogoina, an infectious diseases expert at Niger Delta University Hospital in Nigeria, who also chaired the WHO's mpox emergency committee said, "I worry that in Africa, we are working blindly."

"We don't understand our outbreak very well, and if we don't understand our outbreak very well we will have difficulty addressing the problem in terms of transmission dynamics, the severity of the disease, risk factors of the disease," he added.

"And I worry about the fact that the virus seems to be mutating and producing new strains."

Meanwhile, Dr Miguel Paredes who is studying the evolution of mpox and other viruses at Fred Hutchison Cancer Center in Seattle said that Mpox has typically been fairly stable and slow to mutate, but APOBEC-driven mutations can accelerate viral evolution.

"All the human-to-human cases of mpox have this APOBEC signature of mutations, which means that it's mutating a little bit more rapidly than we would expect."

What's Next?

Following the outbreak of the mutated versions, clade Ib and IIb, can now essentially be considered a sexually transmitted disease, and more urgent researches are needed.

Children, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems may be at greater risk of serious mpox disease and death,  WHO said.

Planning a response, including vaccination strategies, without this is difficult, the scientists have said.

For now, getting samples to labs is difficult because the healthcare system is already under pressure, experts say.

Some 750,000 people have been displaced amid fighting between the M23 rebel group and the government.