Mpox is a very close cousin of smallpox, which caused major outbreaks around the world and killed about 500 million people over a period of about 100 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox).

Professor David Ussery, a viral genomics expert who has been working with bioinformatic analysis of bacterial genomes since the first sequence was published in 1995, is available for an interview to discuss this outbreak. 

"This is important because it's possible that Mpox could become very lethal, with only a few small changes in its genome sequence. One of the differences between Mpox and smallpox is that smallpox can only be transmitted from humans to humans, but Mpox can be transmitted from humans to animals and back, making it potentially easier to spread."

"The current Monkeypox virus (MPX) outbreak is not only the largest known outbreak to date caused by a strain belonging to the West African clade but also results in remarkably different clinical and epidemiological features compared to previous outbreaks of this virus [PMID: 36074056]."

"The 2022 outbreak of Mpox is a newish clade that originated in Nigeria in 2017 and spread to Europe and the U.S. We found that an Mpox genome sequenced from Arkansas is essentially the same as one found in Portugal, Germany, Spain, France, and the UK."

(Newswise/SD)