F. Javier Membrillo de Novales
Vice-president and spokesperson of the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (SEIMC) and coordinator of the SEIMC Mpox Working Group
The SEIMC Mpox Working Group has been following the evolution of the current outbreak of mpox clade Ib closely over the last few months. Our Board of Directors and our STI (GEITS) and HIV-AIDS (GESIDA) study groups regularly hold meetings with the Ministry of Health and other actors involved in the response to mpox.
We agree that the risk of transmission to the general population in our setting is low, given that transmission mainly occurs through close skin-to-skin contact. However, these data have been verified mainly in the clade circulating in Europe since 2002, clade 2b. We need to closely monitor the current situation in DR Congo and other African countries to understand the high number of non-sexual transmissions and their possible relation to mutations in the virus that could modify its droplet transmissibility.
However, we insist that the pandemic potential of this virus is very low and we do not believe that vaccination of the general population should be considered at this time.