In response to Lusa news agency, the DGS (Portuguese Health Authority) explains that “all cases reported in Portugal are from clade IIb of the monkeypox virus, with no cases of clade I identified.”
On Thursday, after Sweden reported the first case of a more contagious and dangerous variant of the disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned about the possibility of detecting other imported cases of mpox, previously known as monkeypox, in Europe.
According to the DGS, between June 1, 2023, and July 31, 2024, 244 cases of mpox were reported in Portugal. Between May and July 2024, three new cases were reported.
The DGS also emphasizes the importance of early case detection, diagnosis, and prevention and control mechanisms to reduce transmission chains when new cases appear. The health authority also recommends preventive vaccination for the population at higher risk of infection.
In Portugal, the first alert for the disease dates back to May 3, 2022, with laboratory confirmation by the National Institute of Health Dr. Ricardo Jorge (INSA) of five cases of the mpox virus.
In June 2023, a second outbreak was identified after three months without reported cases in the country. In this second outbreak, the epidemiological and clinical profile remains similar to the first. Almost all cases are men, aged between 19 and 64 years.
From the beginning of vaccine availability (July 16, 2022) until July 31 this year, 9,391 people were vaccinated. Of the 16,706 inoculations, 15,400 (92%) occurred in a pre-exposure context, according to the latest report from health authorities.
The WHO had already declared the mpox outbreak in Africa as a global health emergency on Wednesday, with confirmed cases among children and adults in more than a dozen countries and a new variant in circulation.
This is the second time in two years that the infectious disease has been considered a potential threat to international health, an alert that was initially raised in May last year, after its spread was contained and the situation was considered under control.
The new variant can be easily transmitted through close contact between two individuals, without the need for sexual contact, and is considered more dangerous than the 2022 variant.
Mpox is mainly transmitted through close contact with infected people, including sexual contact.
Unlike previous outbreaks, where lesions were mainly visible on the chest, hands, and feet, the new strain causes moderate symptoms and lesions on the genitals, making it more difficult to identify, which means people can infect others without knowing they are infected.
Mpox was first discovered in humans in 1970 in the current Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire), with the spread of the Clade I subtype (of which the new variant is a mutation), which has since been mainly confined to West and Central African countries, where patients are generally infected by infected animals.
In 2022, a global epidemic of the clade II subtype spread to a hundred countries where the disease was not endemic, mainly affecting homosexual and bisexual men.
