KP’s health department said today that one mpox case had been  https://www.dawn.com/news/1852551/ncoc-issues-advisory-as-first-suspected-mpox-case-surfaces - confirmed  in the area, withdrawing a previous statement that three mpox patients had been detected there this week on arrival from the United Arab Emirates.

Mardan District Health Officer (DHO) Javed Iqbal said the location of the confirmed mpox patient, a man the officer said had recently returned from Saudi Arabia, was unknown.

He had initially received tests and advice at a hospital in Peshawar, Dr Iqbal told Reuters, but later returned to his home a few hours away in Mardan and then went to another district.

“When we visited his home in Mardan, it was locked from outside and his neighbours told us that the family has left for Dir,” said the Mardan DHO.

“We approached our fellow colleagues of the health department in Dir district, but they couldn’t trace him even in Dir.”

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Shah said so far they had no confirmation of the new variant, but the sequencing of the sample of the confirmed patient was under way.

“Once that’s done, we will be able to say what strain is this,” said Shah.

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Mpox vaccine maker seeks approval for use in teens

Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic said it was seeking European approval to use its mpox vaccine in children aged 12 to 17, after the WHO declared the current virus surge a global public health emergency.

Bavarian Nordic’s vaccine is currently only approved for people 18 years and older.

“Children and adolescents are disproportionately affected by mpox in the ongoing outbreak in Africa, highlighting the importance and urgency to broaden the access to vaccines and therapies for this vulnerable population,” Bavarian Nordic chief executive Paul Chaplin said in a statement.

The company said it had presented the European Medicines Agency with clinical data from a study which showed “non-inferiority of immune responses from mpox/smallpox vaccination in adolescents and (a) similar safety profile compared to adults.”

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted the vaccine an “emergency use authorisation” for adolescents during the 2022 global mpox outbreak.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that two more cases of mpox were detected in KP. The error is regretted.