Pakistan’s health ministry confirmed on Friday, August 16, that at least one case of the mpox virus has been detected in a patient who had recently returned from a Gulf country. Provincial health authorities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported three additional cases.
A spokesperson for the health ministry stated that sequencing of the confirmed case is underway, and it remains unclear which variant of the mpox virus the patient carries until the process is complete.
Earlier in the day, the health department in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province announced that three cases had been detected in patients arriving from the United Arab Emirates. It was not immediately clear if the case confirmed by the central health ministry was among these three.
This development comes after the World Health Organization declared the recent outbreak of mpox as a public health emergency of international concern on Wednesday, August 14, following the identification of a new variant of the virus. Global health officials confirmed on Thursday, August 15, an infection with this new strain in Sweden, linking it to a growing outbreak in Africa—the first sign of its spread outside the continent since the WHO’s declaration.
