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Having been declared a global health emergency by <keyword id="6366244" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="who" source="Orion">WHO</keyword> just a few weeks ago, the dreaded <keyword id="20965747" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="mpox" source="keywords">Mpox</keyword> (formerly <keyword id="7616951" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="monkeypox" source="Orion">monkeypox</keyword>) has slowly been closing in on India. And now, days after our neighbour <keyword id="19899252" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="pakistan" source="keywords">Pakistan</keyword> confirmed its second Mpox case this month, India has also reported its first one this season. While feeling uncertain is understandable, the situation is far from dire just yet. On Monday, September 9, 2024, the <keyword id="19896140" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="health-ministry" source="keywords">Health Ministry</keyword> confirmed that a previously suspected case of Mpox was a travel-related infection. The patient, a young male, recently returned from a country experiencing ongoing Mpox transmission. Laboratory tests confirmed the presence of the West African clade 2 of the Mpox virus, which is distinct from the more dangerous clade 1 currently under a public health emergency. In its statement, the Ministry emphasised that this case is isolated and in line with the 30 previous Mpox cases reported in India since July 2022. The Ministry clarified that this case does not contribute to the WHO-declared public health emergency associated with clade 1 of Mpox, which has spread primarily in parts of <keyword id="19924003" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="africa" source="keywords">Africa</keyword>. <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="112542249" title="WHO has declared mpox a global health emergency. What happens next?" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div> <h2>Patient condition and response measures </h2>The infected individual is isolated at a designated tertiary care isolation facility. The Ministry reports that the patient is clinically stable, with no systemic illness or pre-existing conditions. Public health authorities have initiated contact tracing and monitoring to ensure the infection remains contained, stating that no widespread public health risk exists at this time. <h2>Mode of transmission and symptoms </h2>The global Mpox outbreak has primarily affected young males, with a median age of 34. The main mode of transmission has been sexual contact, followed by non-sexual person-to-person contact. The most commonly reported symptom is a rash, which can manifest either systemically or in the genital region, followed by fever. WHO data shared by the Ministry indicates that approximately 51.9% of Mpox cases involve individuals living with HIV. This underscores the need for targeted healthcare and awareness, especially in high-risk populations. <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="112561654" title="WHO calls for increased surveillance, sharing of data, vaccines to combat monkeypox outbreak" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div> <h2>Increased vigilance and preparedness </h2>Following the confirmation of this case, the Health Ministry has issued directives to all states and union territories, urging healthcare workers, particularly those in skin/STD clinics and NACO (<keyword id="20887701" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="national-aids-control-organisation" source="keywords">National AIDS Control Organisation</keyword>) clinics, to stay alert to the signs and symptoms of Mpox. These clinics must be prepared for immediate isolation, clinical management, and treatment of complications, adhering to established protocols. The Ministry has also advised enhanced screening and testing of suspected Mpox cases, especially at airports and other points of entry, to prevent further transmission. <h2>Awareness and risk communication </h2>The Ministry has issued guidelines to state AIDS control societies, urging them to be vigilant in identifying suspect cases, especially among vulnerable populations such as female sex workers (FSW) and men who have sex with men (MSM). Communities must be made aware of the disease’s transmission and symptoms, as well as the importance of timely reporting. Clear risk communication, particularly to healthcare workers and intervention sites such as skin and paediatric clinics, is crucial to prevent the spread of the virus. While the Ministry advocates for robust preventive measures, it also stresses the importance of avoiding undue panic among the general public. For now, the Ministry’s actions aim to ensure that India remains well-prepared to handle isolated Mpox cases, while working to prevent any major outbreak in the country. <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="112550492" title="Danish monkeypox-vaccine maker surges 17% after global health emergency declared" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div>

Mpox has finally infiltrated India, but how worried should we be about the viral disease?

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Dr. Anthony <keyword id="11933279" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="fauci" source="Orion">Fauci</keyword> told CNBC people who've received <keyword id="11893994" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="covid-19" source="Orion">COVID-19</keyword> vaccinations "can still enjoy a social gathering" for the holidays.</li><li>He said vaccinated, boosted people "should feel reasonably comfortable" but "we may need to be more restrictive" if numbers worsen.</li></ul>Dr. Anthony Fauci says it's safe for vaccinated people to get together for the holidays despite the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/omicron-covid-cases-records-norway-denmark-uk-south-africa-2021-12">surge in COVID-19 cases</a> from the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/vice-president-kamala-harris-said-we-didnt-see-omicron-coming-2021-12">Omicron coronavirus variant.</a>"If you are vaccinated, your family is vaccinated, you have friends who are vaccinated and hopefully also boosted, you can still enjoy a social gathering, generally in a home," Fauci <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/17/dr-anthony-fauci-on-flying-holiday-parities-as-covid-omicron-spikes.html">said</a> in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Friday.Fauci also spoke about <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/omicron-what-we-know-ariant-winter-holidays-2021-12">holiday travel,</a> saying he'd be comfortable with it. "I would have no problem getting on an airplane. I'm vaccinated. I'm boosted. I know we have to wear a mask on an airplane," he said.He noted that N95 masks are "the best" at keeping out aerosol and droplet particles but said a regular surgical mask and cloth mask work fine as well. He also cautioned that the situation is rapidly evolving. "If the counts keep going up and the test positivity keeps going up, we may need to be more restrictive," Fauci said. "But for right now, people who are vaccinated and boosted should feel reasonably comfortable."The World Health Organization said Saturday that cases of the <keyword id="12616995" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="omicron-variant" source="Orion">Omicron variant</keyword> are doubling every 1.5 to 3 days in areas with community transmission, according to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/omicron-cases-doubling-15-3-days-areas-with-local-spread-who-2021-12-18/">Reuters</a>. The agency added that 89 countries have now reported <keyword id="12616996" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="omicron" source="Orion">Omicron</keyword> cases.In the US, Omicron accounted for 2.9% of sequenced COVID-19 cases in the week ending December 11, according to <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions">data from the CDC</a>. In the Department of Health and Human Services region that includes New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, Omicron was responsible for 13.1% of sequenced cases that same week. This is the highest proportion of omicron cases seen in any of the 10 designated regions.Early data <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-bad-will-omicron-covid-variant-get-us-winter-cases-2021-12">suggests Omicron may be more transmissible than other strains.</a> However, it <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-omicron-1-in-43-cases-hospitalized-us-others-mild-2021-12">may produce milder cases,</a> perhaps because of protection from vaccines.As of December 17, more than 806,000 people have died of the <keyword id="11893194" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="coronavirus" source="Orion">coronavirus</keyword> in the US, with nearly 50.8 million confirmed cases, <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html">according to Johns Hopkins University</a>.

Dr. Fauci says people vaccinated against COVID-19 'can still enjoy a social gathering' for the holidays as WHO warns Omicron cases are doubling in a matter of days in areas with community transmission

<ul class="summary-list"><li>World Health Organization officials called <keyword id="6383835" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="delta">Delta</keyword> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-fittest-coronavirus-variant-who-warns-vulnerable-2021-6">the "fittest" variant to date</a> on Monday.</li><li>Delta is more transmissible, and potentially deadlier, than any other <keyword id="1754604" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="coronavirus">coronavirus</keyword> variant so far.</li><li>Scientists now wonder if the virus has reached "peak fitness," though it's likely too soon to tell.</li></ul>No coronavirus variant spotted so far is more concerning than Delta, the strain first identified in India in February. World Health Organization officials on Monday said Delta is <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-fittest-coronavirus-variant-who-warns-vulnerable-2021-6">the "fittest" variant to date</a>, since it spreads even more easily than other <keyword id="112799" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="variants">variants</keyword> and may lead to more severe cases among unvaccinated people."Delta is a superspreader variant, the worst version of the virus we've seen," Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, <a href="https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1404790585219719170">tweeted last week</a>.But it's possible that Delta is the worst the coronavirus is going to throw at us - that the virus, in other words, has reached what epidemiologists call "peak fitness."Topol and Italian virologist Roberto Burioni explore that scenario in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01421-7">a letter published in the journal Nature</a> on Monday. The virus, they wrote, is likely to hit a point after which it no longer mutates to become more infectious. In that case, they said, "a "'final' variant will prevail and become the dominant strain, experiencing only occasional, minimal variations." It's too soon to know whether that's happened, since Delta isn't yet dominant worldwide. But it likely will be soon -Delta has been detected in more than 80 countries so far and is already dominant in India and the UK."Delta is absolutely going up the fitness peak - whether it's at the top, I think that's very hard to say until we just don't see any further change," Andrew Read, <keyword id="6366244" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="who">who</keyword> studies the evolution of infectious diseases at Pennsylvania State University, told Insider."If Delta takes over the world and nothing changes," he added, "then we'll know in a while - a year or two - that it is the most fit."<h2>The fittest variants are the best at spreading</h2><div type="image" title="coronavirus hug " height="2794" width="3900" msid="83777673" hostid="261"></div>The coronavirus is constantly mutating in relatively harmless ways, but every once in a while, a mutation turns the virus into a more menacing threat. A new variant develops that can evade antibodies generated in response to a vaccine or prior infection, results in more serious illness, or spreads more easily. Emerging research indicates that Delta checks at least two of those boxes.Public Health England <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/confirmed-cases-of-covid-19-variants-identified-in-uk">found</a> that Delta is associated with a 60% increased risk of household coronavirus <keyword id="67884" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Transmission">transmission</keyword> compared to Alpha, the variant discovered in the UK. Alpha is already around <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7003e2.htm">50% more transmissible</a> than the original strain, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Researchers in Scotland also found that getting infected with Delta <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01358-1/fulltext">doubles the risk</a> of hospital admission relative to Alpha. (Previous studies have <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/982640/Feb_NERVTAG_update_note_on_B.1.1.7_severity.pdf">suggested</a> that Alpha may be 30% to 70% deadlier than the original strain.)What's more, emerging research indicates that a single vaccine dose doesn't hold up as well against Delta as it does against other coronavirus strains. Recent Public Health England <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/vaccines-highly-effective-against-hospitalisation-from-delta-variant">analyses</a> found that two doses of Pfizer's vaccine were 88% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 from Delta, while a single shot was just 33% effective. That's compared to 95% efficacy against the original strain, with 52% after one shot.The best way for the coronavirus to achieve peak fitness, Topol and Burioni <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01421-7">wrote in their letter</a>, is to become more contagious. If a variant is already spreading quickly, there's no urgent need for it to evade the body's immune response; it can simply jump to another person."Increasing rate of transmission from person to person is what we're looking for," Read said.So far, Delta is by far the most transmissible variant. The US's Delta cases appear to have <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-coronavirus-variant-growing-in-us-could-imperil-recovery-2021-6">tripled in just 11 days</a>, from 10% of all cases sequenced in early June to 31% last week, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d4abbe5e-8650-4a76-9fea-2d3efa2ed52b">according to a recent estimate from the Financial Times</a>. At that rate, experts predict Delta will become the nation's dominant strain in weeks. That doesn't necessarily mean the coronavirus has reached maximum transmission, though.Read said Delta could still acquire combinations of mutations that make it even better at spreading (what he called a "Delta-plus" variant). It's also possible that two separate variants - Delta and Alpha, for instance - could combine mutations to produce an even more infectious strain. Under a third scenario, Read said, an entirely new lineage might replace Delta as the dominant variant."The biggest concern at the moment is just the sheer number of people that have the virus and therefore the sheer number of variants that are being generated," Read said. "Some of those might be the jackpot which are even fitter than Delta."Still, vaccines will likely provide at least some protection against whatever strain represents the coronavirus' peak fitness."No human vaccine has ever been undermined by a variant to the point where the vaccine was completely useless," Read said.

Has the coronavirus reached 'peak fitness'? Experts wonder if the Delta variant is the worst we'll see.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>One dose of a <keyword id="44612" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Pfizer">Pfizer</keyword> of <keyword id="6409874" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="astrazeneca">AstraZeneca</keyword> <keyword id="24209" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="vaccine">vaccine</keyword> cut household <keyword id="67884" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Transmission">transmission</keyword> by up to 50% in a study.</li><li>Protection kicked in from 14 days after vaccination regardless of age, Public <keyword id="6354750" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="health">Health</keyword> England said.</li><li>It remains unclear how long protection from one dose lasts for.</li></ul><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-vaccine-one-shot-effectiveness-pfizer-moderna-astrazeneca-vaccines-dose-2021-3">A single dose</a> of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine cut the spread of <keyword id="1754604" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="coronavirus">coronavirus</keyword> within a household by up to 50% in a new study.People who had one dose of either vaccine were between 40% and 50% less likely to pass on the virus to people in their household, 21 days after the shot, compared to those who weren't vaccinated at all, the study authors from Public Health England said in a preprint paper posted Wednesday. Protection kicked in at around 14 days after vaccination, with similar levels of protection regardless of age, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/one-dose-of-covid-19-vaccine-can-cut-household-transmission-by-up-to-half" target="_blank" rel="noopener">PHE said in a press release.</a>Both vaccines - one made by Pfizer and German partner <keyword id="3124139" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="BioNTech">BioNTech</keyword>, the other by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford - are two-dose vaccines.The virus is highly likely to spread from person to person within a household. PHE said it expected similar results in other high-risk settings, such as shared accommodations and prisons."Not only do vaccines reduce the severity of illness and prevent hundreds of deaths every day, we now see they also have an additional impact on reducing the chance of passing COVID-19 on to others," Mary Ramsay, head of PHE, said in a statement.The study has not yet been peer-reviewed by experts.So far, more than 33 million Brits have had one vaccine dose, <a href="https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according to government figures. </a>In the US, more than 141 million people have received a single COVID-19 shot, <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)</a>.Pfizer's vaccine is authorized in the US, but AstraZeneca's is not.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker-top-covid-shots-to-watch-in-2021" target="_blank" rel="noopener">COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker: AstraZeneca's shot proves safe and effective, and is headed to the FDA</a>The researchers looked at 57,000 contacts of people who had a COVID-19 vaccine, and compared them to a group of nearly 1 million contacts for unvaccinated people.Given the researchers looked at lab-confirmed cases only, it was not possible to conclude from the research how well vaccines stop people spreading asymptomatic COVID-19. Dr. Peter English, a retired consultant in communicable disease control, said in a statement that the authors may have actually underestimated the vaccines' effectiveness in preventing transmission, because the vaccinated person's contacts could have caught COVID-19 from someone else."This study shows that even if people who are vaccinated do become infected, they are considerably less likely to be infectious, and to pass the infection on to others," he said.A UK-based study reported<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/one-dose-astrazeneca-or-pfizer-vaccine-protects-against-covid-19-2021-4" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> by Insider Thursday</a> showed a single dose of either Pfizer or AstraZeneca's vaccine reduced symptomatic and asymptomatic coronavirus infections overall by more than 65%. Deborah Dunn-Walters, British Society for Immunology COVID-19 Taskforce chair and professor of immunology at the University of Surrey, said in a statement that the study was welcomed, but there was still much to learn about how COVID-19 vaccines affect transmission. "It is still very important for us all to get two doses of the COVID vaccine to ensure we receive the optimal and longest lasting protection, both for ourselves and our communities," she said.

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Mpox has finally infiltrated India, but how worried should we be about the viral disease?

BI India Bureau

Dr. Fauci says people vaccinated against COVID-19 'can still enjoy a social gathering' for the holidays as WHO warns Omicron cases are doubling in a matter of days in areas with community transmission

Sarah Jackson

Has the coronavirus reached 'peak fitness'? Experts wonder if the Delta variant is the worst we'll see.

Aria Bendix

One dose of Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine cuts COVID-19 spread by up to 50% within a household, a study found

Dr. Catherine Schuster-Bruce

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