A 38-year-old man from Edavanna in Malappuram, unaware of his symptoms, visited a local doctor to address painful spots on his skin. Just a week ago, he had returned from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
When the treatment prescribed by the doctor failed to improve his condition, resulting instead in more painful, pus-filled lesions and fever, he opted to seek help at the dermatology outpatient department at Manjeri Medical College Hospital.
Here, the doctors suspected him to be suffering from Mpox or monkeypox infection and later, reports confirmed him to be the first case of mpox infection from the fast-spreading clade 1b type.
This marks South Asia’s first recorded case of the new strain. This is the same strain which led to the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring mpox a public health emergency in August.
However, so far, there is no cause for concern as the patient is in stable condition, according to sources in the Union Health Ministry and Kerala’s health department.
“The patient is in stable condition and has been given the symptomatic treatment to reduce pain and fever," an official from the Kerala health department told News18, requesting anonymity.
The officer said that India has an urgent need to sensitise its healthcare workers to differentiate between normal blisters and blisters caused due to Mpox. “In the 2022-23 attack of this virus, six people from Malappuram were detected with Mpox. At that time, our healthcare workers were trained to differentiate between normal blisters and mpox blisters. This was the reason the doctors at derma OPD immediately picked up the mpox infection and admitted the patient."
According to the case summary of the patient, the officer said the top symptoms in the first few days were severe headache, fever, growing pus-filled lesions and rashes.
“He has lesions on multiple areas on his body, including face, hands and genitals. There are several lesions on the entire body. Fever was his first symptom as told by the patient to health officials taking note of his health summary," the officer said.
4 Children, 2 Elderly & Many Young Adults Under Observation
The Kerala health department is conducting an aggressive contact tracing drive where 29 friends and family members of the patient are being monitored at home. However, so far, none one of them has shown any mpox symptoms.
“No one has developed any symptoms," the officer said, adding that the patient’s friends and family include 29 people. “Four of them are children and two are above the age of 60."
The officer said that the other 37 people were passengers on the same flight with the patient. “All these co-passengers are based in Kerala and come from the five districts of the state. They all have been informed and they are also under home observation."
Starting from 2022, when WHO declared Mpox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, India has reported a total of 30 cases – but all those cases involved clade 2.
The Clade 1b strain has a death rate of 3 per cent, which is significantly higher than the 0.2 per cent death rate of Clade IIb. Hence, Clade 1b is labelled as the new and potentially deadlier strain of the virus.
This Clade is moving from the epicentre of the outbreak in Congo, Africa. In August, Thailand confirmed the first case of Clade 1b strain of mpox followed by Sweden. According to public health experts, the overall risk for the infection to spread among people in India is low, however, there is a need to be alert, especially while travelling.
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