CDC Issues Health Alert to Doctors Over Deadly Mpox Virus Strain

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday issued a health alert to notify clinicians and health departments about a more deadly strain of mpox, also known as monkeypox, as the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) announced he will convene an emergency meeting. The current mpox outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has already seen around 27,000 cases and claimed more than 1,100 lives, most of them children, since the beginning of 2023. The CDC said its alert was about the spread of a subtype of the mpox virus called Clade I from DRC to some neighboring countries. Clade I generally leads to more severe infections than another subtype called Clade II. However, the risk of Clade I infection spreading in the United States is considered to be very low, the CDC added....