A New Monkeypox Strain
Monthly Wrap-up #2 | August, 2024
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Dear reader,
Two years ago, monkeypox broke international news went it suddenly caused a global outbreak the likes of which had never been seen before. An outbreak so massive that the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).
(Although it may be hard to look back on it now, COVID-19 was still a considered a PHEIC at the time too.)
The new found success of monkeypox, a disease previously confined to a dozen countries in West and Central Africa, was due to a novel strain capable of sexual transmission. A strain that largely spread among homosexual and bisexual men, which brought with it flashbacks of the HIV epidemic response and its many flaws.
This was when I began to write about monkeypox.
My first story (published that summer) was a simple intro: Monkeypox: The New Public Health Emergency on the Block — “How bad is monkeypox?” in 4 minutes. What is it? What are the symptoms? How does it spread? What were we doing about it?
A few days latter I wrote about how a vaccine developed against smallpox by Bavarian Nordic had been granted emergency approval against monkeypox, in a effort to fight the outbreak. And by December, I published an update on the epidemic: the vaccines and public health measures were doing well, the global outbreak was waning.
On May of 2023, the World Health Organization declared monkeypox was no longer an international concern, but I had missed the memo. It was only on January of 2024 that I caught up and wrote my fourth story on monkeypox titled: The End of the Global Monkeypox Epidemic.
A pretentious title, I know… But the underlying message was the following: while the epidemic was over in the northern hemisphere, African countries were once again being left to deal with monkeypox by themselves. This would inevitably lead to new outbreaks in the future.
My latest stories
Monkeypox, or mpox — as it is now known — has once again returned to the spotlight as predicted and so this month I wrote two new stories on the subject.
My fifth story describes the ongoing outbreak of mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) where reports have emerged of sexual transmission of a new strain of monkeypox virus belonging to clade I — the most virulent and dangerous of the two known clade.
This new strain is threatening a global epidemic once more and, although we are increasingly aware of its dangers, preventing the spread of the outbreak has been almost impossible.
While writing about the new strain, it soon became clear that one story would not be enough to cover everything.
In my first piece I focused on the public health aspect of the outbreak — an analysis of how the new strain was spreading. But there were also many interesting things to be said about the genetic background of the new virus, which I had put down in my notes but never quite fit within the main story.
Surprisingly, on the afternoon of August 14th, the same day my story was published, the WHO declared mpox an international emergency for the second time in two years. And so I took this opportunity to describe the new virus strain and its mutations in detail.
All of my mpox stories have been published on Microbial Instincts, so if you are interested on the subject, do check it out.
My work in progress
I was on vacation for the past couple of weeks so currently I don’t have any work in progress worthy of that name. What I do have, as is the case for many writers I believe, is half a dozen drafts that consist of little more than a title and one or two news links.
There is one in particular that I am bound to finish in the next month. It focuses on the amazing news that the Iberian lynx — an iconic animal of the Iberian Peninsula — is no longer an endangered species. This is a story very dear to me because the Iberian lynx is a staple of conversation efforts in Portugal, where I live.
I have also been keeping up with news on infectious diseases and I can say that there will be developments on the mpox story. There are also a few other stories on my radar, namely on malaria, dengue and measles that I am likely to follow up. No promises.
Wish you all a great September, cheers.
Gil
