Thailand on Thursday confirmed an mpox case reported this week was the clade 1b strain of the virus, the second confirmed case of the variant outside of Africa.

The case is a 66-year-old European man who had arrived in Thailand last week from an unspecified African country where the disease was spreading.

"The test results confirm that he is infected with the Clade 1b strain of monkeypox, which is the first case diagnosed in Thailand, but this man is likely infected from an endemic country," Thongchai Keeratihattayakorn, director-general of the Department of Disease Control, told Reuters.

He said no other local infections had been detected through contact tracing.

The Malaysian Health Ministry announced on Sunday that it would initiate preventive measures, including enhanced surveillance at international entry points, where travelers from countries reporting mpox cases must monitor their health for 21 days.

Individuals with a history of high-risk activities and symptoms, such as rashes or blisters, are urged to seek an immediate medical examination and avoid contact to prevent the spread of the virus, and suspected and confirmed cases should be promptly reported to health offices. Strict hygiene protocols are imposed in premises that involve skin contact, such as spas and massage centers.

Singapore has assessed that the immediate risk of mpox to the city-state "is low for now," Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said on his Facebook page this past week. "Our clinics and checkpoint authorities are looking out for patients and travelers with symptoms," Ong added. "We will activate isolation and contact tracing measures whenever we detect a case."

Clade II mpox, which caused the 2022 epidemic, is still circulating in the U.S. at low levels, the experts note. "It’s down to single digits or maybe a dozen cases a month," says Kuritzkes.

There are no known cases of mpox clade I or Ib in the U.S. at this time. "The risk to the general public in the United States from clade I mpox circulating in the DRC is very low," the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a news release on Aug. 14.

Experts agree that the while it is possible for a person to become infected with clade I mpox in a country where it’s spreading and travel back to the U.S., the chances of this happening are slim.

In a health alert issued on Aug. 7, the CDC stated that the risk of clade I mpox importation into the U.S. was "very low" due to the limited number of travelers and lack of direct commercial flights from the DRC and its neighboring countries to the U.S.

Ronald Weitzer shows that although some of the central pillars of Thailand’s sex industry remain unaltered over the past four decades, in other respects there has been a profound transformation.

In the sector oriented toward foreign visitors, the number of sex businesses and independent operators has grown numerically and geographically; customers are increasingly diverse in race and nationality; paid sexual encounters are no longer confined to young Thai women and older white men; transgender women comprise a significant share of the workforce; and technological advances give participants more autonomy than ever before.