A new outbreak of mpox from several African nations has led to an epidemiologist warning, "we do expect this virus to spread through most of the corners of the world".
Earlier this month the World Health Organisation declared the current upsurge of mpox in central Africa a public health emergency of international concern, which is the highest alert level for events that constitute a public health risk to other countries and requires a coordinated international response.
The WHO reported more than 17,000 mpox cases and in excess of 500 deaths worldwide this year.
Formerly known as monkeypox, the outbreak comes as a new strain — named clade 1 — is said to be spreading mainly through sexual transmission.
New Zealand was currently outside of the affected regions.
Epidemiologist Salim Abdool Karim told Breakfast previous, occasional outbreaks of mpox had not "been of concern" but said the new strain presented a "slightly different situation".
"This current situation, we're dealing with a population that doesn't have a protection from past small pox vaccination, and that population has been growing. So people up to the age of 30 and 40 years have not had a smallpox vaccination, so they are at risk."
He said the new variant was being spread through sexual transmission, in which more adults are becoming infected rather than children as seen in the past.
"This new variant is spreading more rapidly and is spreading now to several countries in Africa and its only a matter of time before it spreads elsewhere,' he said.
Karim said fortunately, mpox was not spread through droplets or respiratory systems similar to how Covid-19 was transmitted across the globe, saying mpox was "a much more slowly spreading infection and its also mostly mild".
"So that's one of the reasons that it is less concerning, but we do expect this virus to spread through most of the corners of the world."
He said scientists did not yet fully understand how changes to the genetic code had led to the virus becoming more easily transmissible.
"Vaccination has to be used judiciously, because we only have a small number of vaccines and they're quite expensive. So the focus of vaccines has been on healthcare workers and close contacts of identified cases.
"It has to be pointed out that the usual public health measures, which is to test, trace and isolate work superbly with mpox. Because it's a slow-spreading virus, those measures are what we are going to depend on to control the spread of this virus."
In an outbreak in 2022, a "worldwide spread" of the clade 2 of mpox strain impacted many countries, and was predominantly transmitted through men who have sex with men.
"After a few months, the cases started declining due to behaviour changes and just using up the population of susceptibles. When that petered out, the public health emergency of international concern was lifted in May 2023.
"This is not the same virus, it spreads differently, different risk groups. So we're now seeing a different situation to the previous public health emergency of international concern."
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