Health
Mpox’s Changing Face Poses Challenge to Containment Efforts
- WHO declared outbreak a global public health emergency
- New strain spreads fast, related to dangerous version of virus
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Changes in the virus that causes mpox are just the latest challenge facing disease trackers trying to contain an outbreak of the virus that’s become a global health emergency.
The surge of cases is centered in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country roughly the size of Western Europe that’s been wracked by decades-long conflict, severe poverty and malnutrition as well as camps housing hundreds of thousands of displaced people. Now, just like the coronavirus, influenza and the many other pathogens that pose persistent risks, the virus is mutating, further complicating the effort to track its spread.