SINGAPORE – The mpox outbreak in Africa and other places is “very worrying” and Singapore should expect the virus to arrive at its shores.
Giving an update on Aug 17, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said the current risk of an outbreak in Asia and Singapore from Africa is low as there are no direct flights to the affected areas in the continent. However, the virus, which has seen a rapid surge in several African countries, is expected to spread to the Middle East and Europe which Singapore has flight connections to.
“I would say, in general, this is a very worrying situation, especially for the African continent. “But I think we should work on the basis that mpox will arrive in Asia. And probably, Singapore will be one of the first places to find cases because of our flight connections (to Middle East and Europe),” said Mr Ong, who was speaking on the sidelines of a skills and career fair in Bukit Canberra, Sembawang.
“This is something worrying. We should be on alert. We should expect it to arrive in Singapore, and then when it does, respond appropriately and effectively.”
Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions on the body. A new sub-variant – clade I – has alarmed global health experts due to its ability to spread easily through close, personal contact.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Aug 14 declared mpox a global public health emergency for the second time in two years.
The current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has seen 27,000 cases and more than 1,100 deaths since January 2023, largely among children.
WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the emergence of a new clade of mpox, its rapid spread in eastern DRC, and the reporting of cases in several neighbouring countries are “very worrying”.
In the past month, more than 100 laboratory-confirmed cases of the new sub-variant have been reported in four countries neighbouring the DRC that have not reported mpox before: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.
Citing experts, WHO said the true number of cases may be higher as a large proportion of clinically compatible cases have not been tested.
It added that several outbreaks of different clades of mpox have occurred in various countries, with different modes of transmission and levels of risk.
Following the outbreak in the DRC and surrounding countries, Sweden on Aug 15 announced its first case of mpox caused by the clade I variant.
To date, all infections detected in Singapore have been the milder clade II ones, mostly during the 2022-23 global outbreak. There were 32 cases here in 2023, and 18 in 2022 from the time reporting of the disease started at end June that year.
The Republic has had 12 cases of mpox since January 2024, which the Ministry of Health (MOH) confirmed were from the clade II variant.
