Monkeypox Cases Surge 160 Percent in Africa as More Countries Declare Outbreaks

A doctor examines a woman infected with monkeypox in Zomea Kaka, in the Central African Republic, on Oct. 18, 2018. (Charles Bouessel/AFP/Getty Images)

African health officials announced that monkeypox cases have soared 160 percent so far this year, while warning that the risk of further spread is high given that antiviral treatments or vaccines are not readily available in most countries on the continent.

The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said in an outbreak report released on July 31 that monkeypox, also known as mpox, has been reported in 15 countries in Africa over the past two-and-a-half years.

Burundi and Rwanda both reported the virus for the first time this week, while new outbreaks were also declared in Kenya and the Central African Republic.

“We are very concerned about the cases of monkeypox,” the Central African Republic’s public health minister, Pierre Somsé, said on July 29.

Kenya’s Health Ministry said in a statement on July 31 that it found monkeypox in a passenger traveling from Uganda to Rwanda at a border crossing in southern Kenya. The ministry said that a single mpox case was enough to warrant an outbreak declaration.

There have been an estimated 14,250 cases so far this year in Africa, which is 160 percent higher compared to the same period last year, per the Africa CDC report, which also expressed concern about the virus’s lethality on the continent.

While monkeypox is “moderately transmissible and usually self-limiting,” Africa CDC said that the 3.9 percent case fatality rate on the African continent is much higher than in the rest of the world.

By comparison, fewer than 1 percent of people infected with the virus died during the global monkeypox emergency in 2022.

Death rates as high as 11 percent have been reported historically, although the WHO has reported case fatality rates in the 3–6 percent range in recent years, according to a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

In Africa, the number of deaths due to monkeypox has jumped by 19 percent so far this year, per the Africa CDC report.

Earlier this year, scientists reported the emergence of a new form of the deadlier version of monkeypox in a mining town in Congo. The more lethal variant can kill up to 10 percent of those infected.

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders called the expanding mpox outbreak “worrying,” given the virus’s new genetic mutation and the fact that the disease had been recorded in camps for displaced people in Congo’s North Kivu region, which shares a border with Rwanda.

“There is a real risk of explosion, given the huge population movements in and out,” Dr. Louis Massing, the group’s medical director for Congo, said in a statement.

Monkeypox spreads via close contact with infected people, including through sex.

Generally, there are two types of mpox—Clade I and Clade II.

The United States continues to see only Clade II cases of monkeypox, which is a less severe variant that 99.9 percent of infected people survive, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The Clade I variant causes more severe illness and is more infectious, with the CDC stating that some outbreaks have killed up to 10 percent of people who get sick.

The CDC first warned about the emergence of the more severe monkeypox variant in December 2023, while advising Americans traveling to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to exercise caution, including avoiding close contact with sick people, avoiding contact with dead or live wild animals, and avoiding eating or preparing meat from wild game.

The European CDC said in a July 29 statement that the risk to European populations from the new monkeypox variant circulating in Africa is “low.”

Monkeypox outbreaks in the West have mostly been shut down with the help of treatments and vaccines, but barely any have been available in African countries, including Congo.

“We can only plead, like so many others, for vaccines to arrive in the country and as quickly as possible so that we can protect the populations in the areas most affected,” Massing said in a statement.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.