Strange New Pox Arises Out of US Wilderness, Claims First Victim

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An Alaska man has died from a disease with only seven known human victims, none of them fatalities.

The orthopoxvirus Alaskapox was identified nine years ago, according to the Alaska Department of Health.

The man who died lived in the Kenai Peninsula in the southern part of the state, about 500 miles from Fairbanks to the north, where all the previous cases had been clustered.

“I totally appreciate that that’s a new case, that people are surprised. But then, if you know the reality of diseases and the history of diseases, we shouldn’t be surprised,” Falk Huettmann, a University of Alaska Fairbanks biologist who studies wildlife diseases, said, according to the Alaska Beacon.

“Everything is possible by now,” he said.

The Kenai Peninsula man who died was elderly with a compromised immune system, according to a state epidemiology bulletin issued Friday.

He, like the individuals sicked by the disease near Fairbanks, lived in a wooded area where contact could have been possible with small mammals, the bulletin said.

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