Genomic characterisation of human monkeypox virus in Nigeria

First identified in 1958, MPXV has caused sporadic human outbreaks in central and west Africa, with a mortality rate between 1% and 10%.1 Viral genomes from west Africa and the Congo Basin separate into two clades, the latter being more virulent.2 Recently, MPXV outbreaks have occurred in Sudan (2005), the Republic of the Congo and Democratic Republic of the Congo (2009), and the Central African Republic (2016).3 A suspected outbreak of human MPXV was reported to WHO on Sept 26, 2017, by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) after a cluster of suspected cases had occurred in Yenagoa Local Government Area, Bayelsa State, Nigeria.4 Since the onset of the outbreak, 155 cases have been reported by the NCDC, of which 56 were confirmed.4 A subset of these samples was sent to the WHO Collaborating Center at the Institut Pasteur de Dakar (IPD) in Senegal for confirmation by PCR. [...]no other cases have been reported in the area. Because of the lapse in MPXV cases in the region and recent cases in the Congo Basin, the origin of the Nigerian outbreak needed to be identified, as did whether the outbreak was a result of a local zoonotic spillover event or importation from another endemic country. The research described herein was supported by the Institute Pasteur in Dakar, Senegal, and the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (CB10246) and supported with equipment provided by the Targeted Acquisition of Reference Materials Augmenting Capabilities (TARMAC) initiative and the Defense Biological Product Assurance Office (DBPAO) through a task order award to the National Strategic Research Institute, FA4600-12-D-9000.