San Mateo County health officials have announced the primary known case of a severe type of Mpox, which has led to an outbreak of the disease throughout East and Central Africa.
The county health department said Saturday that it’s working with state and native health officials to reply to the case of Clade Impox, which an individual within the county contracted while traveling to Africa. The person appeared to have “mild” symptoms and is isolating and recovering at home, the health authority said.
The case was the primary known case of this particular version of MPOX within the United States, adding to the relatively small but growing number of nations all over the world which have discovered cases of it. A special version of the virus, called clade II, has been circulating within the United States since 2022 and has sickened at the least 108 people within the county and greater than 100,000 people worldwide lately.
The recently discovered version is thought to cause more severe illness and a better mortality rate than the version previously discovered within the United States. Still, local health officials said the danger to the general public from the virus, which might cause a painful rash in addition to fever, chills and muscle aches, was “very low.”
Local health officials are working to succeed in anyone who could have had contact with the infected person, and on this case they’re expected to achieve this, said Preston Merchant, a spokesman for the San Mateo County Health Department.
“There is no concern or evidence that MPox clade I is currently spreading among individuals in San Mateo County or elsewhere in the United States,” the health agency said in a news release Saturday.
The version of the virus discovered in San Mateo County is at the middle of an outbreak that has killed greater than 1,000 people in Central and East Africa this yr, with most of those cases occurring within the Democratic Republic of Congo. The spread of the virus prompted the World Health Organization to declare a public health emergency of international concern in August, particularly because the virus spread to several other neighboring countries in Africa.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, travelers who contracted the virus in Africa tested positive for the version in Germany, India, Kenya, Sweden, Thailand, the United Kingdom, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The virus typically spreads through skin-to-skin, intimate and sexual contact, and folks can even grow to be infected with it by directly touching contaminated objects and surfaces utilized by people affected by Mpox, Landes say – and federal officials.
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