The first two infected patients had returned from the United Arab Emirates. The A.2 strain, which was detected in the US last year, has not been linked to major groups.
The current outbreak is being driven by the monkeypox virus strain B.1, said Dr. Pragya Yadav, senior scientist at the National Institute of Virology (NIV) and lead author of the study.
The study’s findings have been published on Research Square, a preprint server, and have not been peer-reviewed. India has so far reported nine cases of monkeypox and one death.
The cases from India arrived from the United Arab Emirates and presented with fever, myalgias, and vesicular lesions in the genital area with cervical lymphadenopathy.
Oropharyngeal and nasopharyngeal swab, EDTA blood, serum, urine, lesion samples from multiple sites were collected from both cases on the ninth day after illness onset. Clinical samples from both cases were analyzed by real-time PCR for orthopoxvirus, monkeypox virus (MPXV).
West Africa and Central Africa (Congo Basin) are the two known clades of monkeypox virus, of which the Congo Basin strain causes more severe disease, 11 percent mortality, and higher transmissibility. “The West African clade is found to be circulating in the current 2022 ongoing outbreaks in non-endemic countries. It is less severe than the previously reported Congo lineage,” Dr. Yadav said.