Though the surge in Sierra Leone has received much of the attention, cases are also rising in two other countries in West Africa: Ghana and Liberia.
The test the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses to identify clade I mpox cases is 'most likely not reliable' for detection of the substrain identified in the study, the authors say.
Another mpox study today showed that dose-sparing vaccine administration of the Jynneos vaccine appeared to have worked.
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Contacts of the patient are being closely monitored and offered preventive vaccination.
The pooled prevalence of conjunctivitis in mpox was 9%, followed by impaired vision (4%), keratitis (3%), and eye lesions (3%).
Fighting has upended lab testing and sent mpox patients fleeing from treatment centers back into the community.
Close adherence to glove-wearing and other standard precautions likely protected residents, the authors say.
Like other recent cases, the patient had traveled to Uganda, one of Africa's clade 1b mpox hot spots.
Among confirmed cases in the DRC, children 15 years and younger account for 49% of cases.
Though the current African outbreak also features sexual transmission, household transmission is also taking place at a high rate.
In other developments, the WHO says violence in the eastern DR Congo complicates the country's mpox response and that Azerbaijan has reported its first case.
In the region's other developments, Sierra Leone reported more cases, with the first two linked to the clade 2 global strain.
The UK mpox patient had recently returned from Uganda, where clade 1b is spreading in the community.
