The World Health Organization announced yesterday, Tuesday, that two people were infected with the new strain of the “Empox” virus (formerly known as “monkeypox”) in the United Kingdom after coming into contact with a patient returning from Africa, in the first local transmission of the disease outside the country.
The organization said in a statement that the two infected people lived “in the same house as a person who tested positive for the disease shortly after a trip that led him to a number of African countries.”
She added that these are “the first two locally transmitted cases in Europe and the first ever outside Africa since August 2024.”
In the statement, the Director of the European Branch of the World Health Organization, Hans Kluge, reassured that “the overall risk to the population of the United Kingdom and the region remains low, but local transmission of the “1BMPOX” disease should prompt health authorities to strengthen surveillance measures and prepare for rapid contact tracing of cases. Suspected and confirmed.
For its part, the British Health Security Agency said that the two infected people were being treated at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, warning of the possibility of other cases appearing in the same house.
A week ago, the British agency detected the first infection with this new variant in London.
More than a thousand people have died as a result of Imbox in Africa, with about 48,000 infections recorded since January, according to the African Union Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC-Africa).
Impox is a viral disease that is transmitted from animals to humans, but it is also transmitted between humans through physical contact. It causes fever, muscle pain, and skin ulcers, and can be fatal.