Madagascar is dividing and sharing mpox vaccine doses as its largest recorded outbreak keeps growing, the Telegraph reported on Tuesday, having earlier put the Clade 1b case count at 3,000. Deaths and containment plans remain unreported.
Mpox is a viral disease that spreads mainly through close physical contact, causing fever and a characteristic rash, and it circulates in several distinct genetic lineages known as clades. Clade 1b is the variant that emerged in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and drove the outbreak that spread across central and eastern Africa before reaching further afield. Madagascar, an island state off Africa's southeastern coast, is now recording its own outbreak of that same strain. The Telegraph puts the recorded case count at 3,000. Because the island's health system operates at a distance from the continental response networks, the trajectory of the outbreak there is being watched as a test of how far Clade 1b can travel.
Madagascar is being forced to divide and share mpox vaccine doses as its epidemic accelerates, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday. The island is facing its largest recorded outbreak of the virus formerly known as monkeypox.
An explosive mpox outbreak has produced 3,000 recorded cases in Madagascar, the Telegraph reports. The epidemic has been linked to Clade 1b, the strain that emerged in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.