Health Dept urges public to exercise maximum caution amid Mpox outbreak
To date, there have been five confirmed cases in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal in the last month, with one fatality reported at Tembisa Hospital earlier in the week.
Picture: GCIS
JOHANNESBURG - The national Department of Health has urged the public to exercise maximum caution amid an Mpox, also known as monkeypox, outbreak in parts of the country.
To date, there have been five confirmed cases in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal in the last month, with one fatality reported at Tembisa Hospital earlier in the week.
Minister of Health Joe Phaahla confirmed the outbreak during a media briefing in Pretoria on Wednesday.
“It’s not an infection which you can acquire simply by being in one room, unlike what we had with Covid and Influenza. There must have been contact on a skin to skin level.”
— EWN Reporter (@ewnreporter) June 12, 2024
Phaahla urges the public to exercise caution as Monkey Pox spreads through physical contact @Alpha_Mero25 pic.twitter.com/Ao8kgpgrPm
All five people who tested positive for Mpox had no travel history, indicating that all infections were transmitted locally.
Phaahla said that tracing possible infections was a challenging task.
"The outbreak response team has embarked on contact tracing and case finding in affected provinces, and it did actually come out that it is not easy to do full tracings."
Phaahla said that sexual activity was one of the most common ways of spreading the disease.
"It’s not an infection which you can acquire simply by being in one room, unlike what we had with COVID and influenza. There must have been contact on a skin-to-skin level."
Meanwhile, Phaahla said Mpox vaccines would soon be made available to prevent further infections.