A new, highly contagious and severe strain of the mpox virus, formerly known as monkeypox, is spreading around the world following a major outbreak in Africa.
Clade 1b, the new clade 1 variant, first reported in September last year among sex workers in the mining town of Kamituga in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has now mutated and is affecting children under 15 years of age.
On August 14, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (The CDC declared mpox a global public health emergency for the second time in two years after it spread to countries neighboring the Democratic Republic of the Congo that had no previous records of cases.
In response to the declaration of a global emergency by mpox, Eric Amunga, known as AMERIX in Xaccused the WHO of being a criminal organisation and asked his 1.9 million followers to ignore the safety guidelines issued.
“Monkeypox is a scam. Don’t comply. Refuse. Pfizer wants to finish its COVID-19 vaccine stocks after people rejected them. Africa’s corrupt political system wants to derail the boiling rebellion of Gen Z. Mpox is another WHO scam,” he posted on his X account.
That is false.
MPOX has killed 517 people and infected 17,000 this year alone, according to the Africa CDC. With new and more aggressive mutations, the situation has escalated to a global health crisisCOVID-19 vaccines do not protect against smallpox. To treat the mpox virus, a smallpox vaccine called Jynneos, developed by the Danish company Bavarian Nordic, is used.
He Champion of Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response The African Union (AU) Regional Office for the Prevention and Control of Poverty Reduction (PPPR), which represents all 54 African countries, reported on August 16 that the number of affected African countries could rise from 13 to 16, after three additional countries reported “cases under investigation to be confirmed.”
Sweden reported its first case mpox after the WHO announcement. Since then, new cases have been reported in other regions outside Africa.
From 2022, The United States has reported 32,000 cases infections and 58 deaths, mainly among gay and bisexual men.
Amunga did not inform his nearly 2 million followers on X that mpox is not a new disease. The virus was discovered in 1958 in a colony of monkeys, and the first case of human infection was recorded in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
According to the CDC“The virus is most common in the rainforests of western and central Africa, with thousands of cases reported each year.”
Meanwhile, Amunga’s false call not to follow WHO recommendations on mpox, as well as his description of the vaccine as a “scam”, are part of a global viral trend on X, involving thousands of anti-vaxxers and reaching millions of users.
[Este artículo fue originalmente publicado por Polygraph y traducido por Mila Cruz].
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