It was revealed that the M pox virus was seen for the first time in Ivory Coast. According to news in the national press, the Ministry of Health announced that the M pox virus was detected in 2 people for the first time since the 2022 epidemic that affected the world.
It was noted that the cases were seen in the Tabou and Koumassi regions of Abidjan and that the two patients, one 46 years old and the other 20 years old, were not in a life-threatening condition.
The M pox virus first appeared in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), then known as Zaire, and cases were limited to West and Central African countries.
In May 2022, a subtype of the virus caused a worldwide epidemic, and 90,000 people in 111 countries were infected with the virus, and 140 of them died.
A new and more deadly strain of the virus was detected in the DRC in September 2023, and 450 of the 11,000 people who caught the virus died.
THE MOST DANGEROUS VARIANT EVER
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on July 5 that the new variant of the M pox virus was spreading rapidly on the eastern border of the Democratic Republic of Congo and was “the most dangerous variant yet.”
WHO reported that the M-pox outbreak was initially triggered by sexual transmission, and that there was evidence that this new variant could also be transmitted through close skin contact, warning that this would increase the speed and potential impact of the virus.
(AA)