a first case of the new variant discovered, what we know

This new variant of the Mpox virus, also known as monkeypox, is called clade 1b and would be “more transmissible and more dangerous” than the clade 2 strains which had made news of the virus in 2022.

Fever, swollen lymph nodes, skin rashes and even death in the most serious cases are the symptoms of Mpox, formerly called monkeypox. As revealed this Monday January 6 West Francea first case of the new variant (clade 1b) of the virus was discovered in France. The patient would be a woman living in Brittany. She was treated in the infectious diseases department of Rennes University Hospital and is said to be doing well.

This is the third case of indigenous contamination in Europe, after the discovery of a first, imported for its part, in Sweden last summer, followed by contamination on European soil in the United Kingdom in October and ‘another in Germany in December. Transmissions, it seems, occurred within families for these two other cases. The French patient, for her part, could have been infected by a man who recently returned from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Until now, other cases of Mpox had already been recorded in France – 215 in 2024 alone according to BFMTV -, but each time they were clade 2 strains, the same ones which had caused so much talk about monkeypox in 2022. In mid-August 2024, the new Mpox variant, however, forced the World Health Organization (WHO) to place the virus in a “public health emergency of international concern”, with the authorities considering in particular that clade 1 viruses are “more transmissible” but also “more dangerous” than those of clade 2.