BANGKOK: Thailand on Thursday confirmed Asia’s first known case of a new, deadlier strain of mpox in a patient who had traveled to the kingdom from Africa.
The patient landed in Bangkok on August 14 and was sent to hospital with mpox symptoms.
The Department of Disease Control said laboratory tests on the 66-year-old European confirmed he was infected with mpox Clade 1b.
“Thailand’s Department of Disease Control wishes to confirm the lab test result which shows mpox Clade 1b in a European patient,” the department said in a statement, adding that the World Health Organization (WHO) would be informed of the development.
“We have monitored 43 people who have been in close contact with the patient and so far they have shown no symptoms, but we must continue monitoring for a total of 21 days.”
Anyone traveling to Thailand from 42 “risk countries” must register and undergo testing on arrival, the department said.
Mpox cases and deaths are surging in Africa, where outbreaks have been reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda since July.
The World Health Organization has declared a global public health emergency over the new variant of mpox, urging manufacturers to ramp up production of vaccines.
The disease — caused by a virus transmitted by infected animals but passed from human to human through close physical contact — causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions.
While mpox has been known for decades, a new deadlier and more transmissible strain — known as Clade 1b — has driven the recent surge in cases.
Clade 1b causes death in about 3.6 percent of cases, with children more at risk, according to the WHO.
Thongchai Keeratihattayakorn, head of the Thai Department of Disease Control, said that mpox was much less likely to spread rapidly than COVID-19 because of the close contact needed to catch it.

SEOUL: South Korea held a nationwide drill on Thursday that sowed confusion in the capital as traffic was brought to a standstill and thousands of civilians practiced emergency evacuations.
The exercise, linked to the ongoing joint military drills between the United States and South Korea known as Ulchi Freedom Shield, is designed to simulate a war or national emergency. Similar drills happen every year.
In downtown Seoul, an air raid siren blared, followed by loudspeaker announcements urging people to seek shelter. Thousands of pedestrians and government employees cleared from streets and offices, while traffic stopped in some areas, causing confusion and frustration.
“I got stuck in traffic. I didn’t even realize there was a drill, and I didn’t think it was important,” said Kim So-hyeong who was driving through central Seoul.
“I feel like there was a lack of information about the drill. My GPS kept giving me different directions and made me go in circles, so I felt stuck,” she added.
Park Jun-ho, who works at a startup in Seoul’s upscale Gangnam district, said he heard the siren from his office but did not participate.
“Nobody in our office went out,” said Park. “I don’t even think people in our company would know where to go.”
The broad indifference to annual civil defense training stems from the fact that the South has been technically at war with the North since the 1950s, said Park Hyo-sun, a professor at Cheongju University, so there is little sense of urgency to the situation.
“The training itself is to teach the public what to do when a war happens, which we technically are in,” said Park. “But people forget that we are at war, and the level of alertness is very low.”
This year’s drill included responding to a North Korean drone attack and to terrorist incidents, but a planned exercise to deal with trash-laden balloons was canceled.
Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years, with the North ramping up weapons testing and bombarding the South with balloons.
Kim Myung-oh, director-general of emergency planning and civil defense at Seoul City Hall, said the training was an important way for “civilians to learn about shelters close to them and know what to do.”