A new study recently published in the British magazine Nature shows that a more virulent strain of monkeypox virus has the ability to be transmitted through sexual contact. This makes researchers worry about the risk of another global monkeypox epidemic that occurred in 2022. Previous data has shown that this strain, known as clade I, is more virulent than the clade II strain that will be the main strain causing the global monkeypox epidemic in 2022. The clade I strain has caused several small outbreaks in Central Africa over the past few decades, but there were no reports of sexual transmission of this strain before 2023. Since then, the strain has caused a cluster of infections in an area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, apparently possessing the ability to spread through sexual contact.