Pakistan said Friday it had confirmed a case of mpox, a day after Sweden recorded the first infection outside of Africa involving a new, more dangerous strain of the virus that has killed hundreds in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The pox surge in Africa—which has also affected Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda—prompted the World Health Organisation on Wednesday to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, the highest alarm it can sound.
According to AFP, Sweden’s Public Health Agency on Thursday registered a case of the Clade 1b subclade—the same new strain that surged in the DRC since September 2023 and the first such infection outside Africa.
Epidemiologist Magnus Gisslen said in a statement from the agency that the patient was infected during a visit to “the part of Africa where there is a major outbreak of pox Clade 1.”
The mpox strain that caused the case in Pakistan was not immediately known on Friday, the Ministry of Health said in a statement.
“The affected person has come from a Gulf country,” the statement said.
A Pakistani patient is a 34-year-old man and “the first confirmed case we have this year” of mpox, said the director of public health in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Irshad Roghani, where the man is being treated.
“For genetic sequencing of the strain, we have sent samples to Islamabad,” he added.
