On August14th, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD designated the current surge of mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and other African nations, “constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) under the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR).” The PHEIC designation has been issued for the second time in two years and comes in the wake of, “over 100 laboratory-confirmed cases of clade 1b [in the past month] in four countries neighb[o]ring the DRC that have not reported mpox before: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda. Experts believe the true number of cases to be higher as a large proportion of clinically compatible cases have not been tested.”
Chair of the IHR Emergency Committee Professor Dimie Ogoina explained that, “[t]he current upsurge of mpox in parts of Africa, along with the spread of a new sexually transmissible strain of the [mpox] virus, is a [public health] emergency, not only for Africa, but for the entire globe. Mpox, originating in Africa, was neglected there, and later caused a global outbreak in 2022. It is time to act decisively to prevent history from repeating itself.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued an August 14th statement regarding the mpox public health emergency that said, “[t]he risk to the general public in the United States from clade I mpox circulating in the DRC is very low, and there are no known cases in the United States at this time. Due to efforts over the last nine months, the United States is well prepared to rapidly detect, contain, and manage clade I cases should they be identified domestically. The United States has a robust surveillance system in place, including through clinical testing and wastewater analysis. We continue to encourage those at high risk to get vaccinated with the JYNNEOS mpox vaccine, which has been demonstrated to be safe and highly effective at preventing severe disease from mpox. Those who have already had clade II mpox or are fully vaccinated against mpox are expected to be protected against severe illness from clade I mpox. [The] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued an updated Health Alert Network advisory urging clinicians to consider clade I mpox in people who have been in DRC or neighboring countries in the previous 21 days; clinicians are also asked to submit specimens for clade-specific testing for these patients if they have symptoms consistent with mpox. Given the geographic spread of clade I mpox, the U.S. CDC issued an updated Travel Health Notice on Aug. 7th recommending travelers to DRC and neighboring countries practice enhanced precautions.”
In the wake of the mpox public health emergency announcement, the WHO noted that, “[i]n July 2022, the multi-country outbreak of mpox was declared a PHEIC as it spread rapidly via sexual contact across a range of countries where the virus had not been seen before. That PHEIC was declared over in May 2023 after there had been a sustained decline in global cases.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) previously published a communication in August 2022 titled “Information for Blood Establishments Regarding the [Mpox] Virus and Blood Donation.” Within the communication, the agency stated that at that time, “[w]orldwide, there have been no reports of transmission of [mpox] virus through blood transfusion and the risk of transfusion-transmission remains theoretical. The levels of virus in the blood of an infected or exposed individual have not been well characterized.” Considerations for blood establishments referenced by FDA included, “routine measures used to determine blood donor eligibility prevent individuals with symptomatic infections from donating blood; given the robustness of the existing safeguards for blood safety FDA does not recommend that blood establishments ask donors additional, specific questions about possible exposure to monkeypox virus; FDA does not recommend using laboratory diagnostic tests to screen blood donors for monkeypox virus; and FDA will continue to monitor cases of monkeypox in the U.S. and world-wide and the available information about potential risk of transfusion-transmitted [mpox] virus.”