$Top Glove (BVA.SG)$ The mpox outbreak in Africa and other p...

The mpox outbreak in Africa and other places is “very worrying”, and Singapore should expect the virus to arrive at its shores.

Giving an update on Aug 17, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said the current risk of an outbreak in Asia and Singapore from Africa is low as there are no direct flights to the affected areas in the continent. However, the virus, which has seen a rapid surge in several African countries, is expected to spread to the Middle East and Europe which Singapore has flight connections to.

Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions on the body. A new sub-variant – clade I – has alarmed global health experts due to its ability to spread easily through close, personal contact.

There is a need to understand the virus' severity rate. He noted that clade II has a fairly low fatality rate of 0.2% – meaning for every 1,000 people who are infected, there are two deaths.

He added that the fatality rate of the clade I variant is about 3.5% to 4%, while the clade 1b variant has a fatality rate of 0.7%.

Mr Ong said the fatality rate should not be taken lightly. When the Covid-19 pandemic first broke, its fatality rate was 4% before vaccinations.