Monkeypox virus strain in India different from 'superspreader' in Europe: ICMR

Scientists in India have discovered that the monkeypox virus strain circulating in the nation is distinct from the type responsible for the 'superspreader events' in Europe, which led to a worldwide epidemic of the illness.

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There were two monkeypox cases from Kerala that were genetically sequenced by an ICMR-NIV team in Pune, the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Virus A.2, recently introduced to India from the Middle East, was found in the nation, according to statistics. During the epidemic in Thailand and the United States in 2021, it was already prevalent. In Europe, however, the strain that triggered superspreader occurrences was B.1.

"The present sustained human-human transmission of the monkeypox virus is believed to have happened via superspreader events in Europe with 16,000+ cases now spread across 70+ countries. This largely is represented as the B.1 lineage of the virus and encompass the predominant lineage for genomes in 2022," Vinod Scaria, scientist at CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), tweeted.

He noted that A.2 is in contrast to the majority of the genomes across the world which belong to B.1 lineage; and the A.2 cluster, seen in India, is "not suggestive of a superspreader event".

"This would mean" that the cases in the country "are not possibly linked to the European superspreader events", Scaria wrote.

"We might be looking at a distinct cluster of human-human transmission and possibly unrecognised for years. The earliest sample in the cluster from the US is indeed from 2021 suggesting the virus has been in circulation for quite some time, and earlier than the European events," he added.

To keep up with the growing number of cases, he proposed expanding genomic monitoring throughout the nation and perhaps sequencing each and every one of them.

"Public health measures and communication needs to take these new insights into consideration. Wide testing and awareness could uncover many more cases," Scaria said.

(Withinputs from IANS)