The government’s newly released Mpox control strategy outlines a UK-wide public health strategy to control and eliminate mpox over the next year. It reflects a joint commitment from the UK’s four public health agencies, each responsible for their national response, with UKHSA leading coordination, vaccine and treatment procurement, and cross-government preparedness.
The UK’s public health agencies have agreed the following framework for measuring the level of transmission of mpox within the UK at any particular moment in time. The levels are:
- level 1: incursions from the rest of the world – small numbers of imported or import-related cases or clusters
- level 2: transmission within a defined population group
- level 3: transmission with multiple or larger population groups
- level 4: wider significant community transmission – with potential for endemic or epi-zoonotic disease
While their strategic goals are as follows:
- reduce harm (hospitalisation, complications, severe illness, and stigma) and health inequalities from mpox
- reduce the impact of the introduction of clade I mpox by preventing sustained transmission, particularly within sexual networks, in the UK
- achieve and maintain elimination of sustained transmission of clade II mpox in the UK
- contribute to the reduction in global burden via collaboration through sharing knowledge, data, and information
The strategy sets out nine public health interventions help achieve those goals. Among them are rapid and accurate case finding and population-level surveillance, which have been summarised below.
UKHSA will work to develop clinical pathways for those with symptoms of mpox and support the rollout of mpox testing in NHS and local authority commissioned services and laboratories.
Awareness efforts among primary health care, emergency departments, sexual and reproductive health, and travel health clinics will be ramped up to ensure effective and efficient use of testing and clinical pathways, and thus prevention and detection. Information will be analysed at a national level to understand whether mpox cases have been acquired in, or imported to, the UK
Epidemiology and risk factors will be monitored so testing can be scaled up rapidly if changes are detected. Proportionate genomic surveillance of UK mpox will be maintained to inform understanding of domestic epidemiology (for example, contribution of different clades) and to contribute to the global understanding of mpox evolution.
