Pakistan has detected three patients with the mpox virus, the health department in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province said.
The department on Friday said that the viral infection was detected in the patients upon their arrival from the United Arab Emirates.
Pakistan's health ministry has said on Friday that it did not detect any new variant of pox in the country, Reuters news agency reported.
The World Health Organization has declared a recent outbreak of the disease as a public health emergency of international concern after a new variant of the virus has been identified.
Sweden also announced the first case outside Africa of the more dangerous variant of mpox, which the WHO has declared a global public health emergency.
Risks level
The country's public health agency confirmed on Thursday that it was the same strain of the virus that has surged in the Democratic Republic of Congo since September 2023, known as the Clade 1b subclade.
"A person who sought care" in Stockholm "has been diagnosed with mpox caused by the clade I variant. It is the first case caused by clade I to be diagnosed outside the African continent," the agency said in a statement.
The person was infected during a visit to "the part of Africa where there is a major outbreak of mpox clade I", state epidemiologist Magnus Gisslen said in the statement.
"The fact that a patient with mpox is treated in the country does not affect the risk to the general population, a risk that the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) currently considers very low," it said.
Muscular aches
The outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 548 people since the start of the year.
WHO declared the outbreak in the DRC and neighbouring countries a public health emergency of international concern on Wednesday.
The virus was first discovered in humans in 1970 in what is now the DRC.
It is an infectious disease caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals but can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact.
The disease causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions.
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