Conversely, the latest cases have no travel history, and contact tracing revealed no contact with other infected individuals, which would explain their illness. Furthermore, according to the same data, all five new cases are men, some of whom identified as men who have sex with men, suggesting that transmission of the new Mpox strain may be continuing through sexual networks in Europe, particularly among men.
The detail, however, that the scientific community finds itself in, is the fact that clade 1b shows greater transmissibility even after simple contact (skin to skin) , causing women and young children (under 5 years old) to become ill, an observation that has been documented both in African countries where the strain has been circulating since 2024 and in European countries (e.g., Belgium) when transmission between members of the same family was recorded.
