Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced on Friday, August 16, that the French health system was placed on “maximum alert” in the face of the Mpox epidemic, cases of which have been detected in Sweden and then in Pakistan in recent days.
The resigning head of government held a situation update on Friday with ministers Catherine Vautrin and Frédéric Valletoux, while the resurgence of Mpox – formerly called monkeypox – in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) prompted the World Health Organization to declare a public health emergency of international concern on Wednesday, the highest alarm. “Following this meeting, we are placing our health system on maximum alert,” explained Gabriel Attal on X.
On Thursday, Sweden announced that it had recorded a case of clade 1b subtype, the same new strain that has appeared in the DRC since September 2023, more deadly and virulent than clade 2, endemic in West Africa. A case was also announced in Asia, in Pakistan.
No contamination by clade 1 in France
Faced with the spread of this new variant, the Prime Minister announced “new information and recommendation measures” for people traveling to risk areas, and contacted the health authorities so that they could decide on “updating vaccination recommendations” relating to “target populations”.
“Today, in France, no contamination by clade 1 has yet been identified,” recalled Friday evening in a press release Public Health France (SpF). “Since the 2022 epidemic, it is the clade 2 virus that has been circulating quietly” in the country, according to the national agency, which has counted 107 cases of this variant of the virus between January and June 2024. It specifies that “to date, the reported cases are mostly benign and no deaths have been reported.”
Clade 1b, the new strain causing the current epidemic, which originated in the DRC, is however even more dangerous than clade 1, with an estimated mortality rate of 3.6%.
“The risk of infection by a clade 1 Mpox virus for the European population is currently considered low by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control,” recalls SpF, even if, “as in Sweden, this does not prevent it from being probable that sporadic cases will be declared in France.”
Vaccine donation to the most affected countries
Mpox is a viral disease that spreads from animals to humans but is also transmitted through close physical contact with a person infected with the virus. For severe cases, tecovirimat, a drug used to treat infections with orthopoxviruses, the family of smallpox viruses, of which Mpox is a member, may be used. But most often for patients with Mpox clade 2, the patient recovers spontaneously after two to four weeks.
Gabriel Attal also indicated that a “donation of vaccines to the most affected countries” had been decided, at the request of Emmanuel Macron, and announced a new update on Monday.
Vaccines against Mpox have been administered in France since 2022 to people at risk. Since September 2023, the number of people vaccinated has fluctuated between 250 and 450 per month, according to data from Public Health France. The Ministry of Health specifies that “ideally, the vaccine should be administered within four days after the risky contact and a maximum of 14 days”.