A day after the World Health Organization again declared mpox a public health emergency, more bad news came out about the virus.
On Thursday, the National Institutes of Health said that SIGA Technologies’ antiviral tecovirimat did not significantly reduce the duration of mpox lesions in a randomized clinical trial of children and adults with the endemic clade I version of the virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The virus has been spreading to multiple countries in Africa this year. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday there have been more than 17,000 suspected cases and more than 500 deaths on the continent so far this year. Africa’s CDC declared mpox a public health emergency of continental security a day before the WHO’s alarm.
The PALM 007 trial launched in October 2022 and included 597 people at two sites in the DRC. They were hospitalized for
