A gold-mining town in eastern Congo has emerged as a hotspot for mpox as a new strain spreads, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. Kamituga is part of the South Kivu province, where more than 6,000 people are suspected to have contracted the virus.

Congo's South Kivu province is at the epicenter of the world’s latest mpox outbreak, in what the World Health Organization has called a global health emergency.

Health Minister of Indian state of Kerala, Veena George, said on Thursday that genome sequencing will be conducted to identify the variant of the virus that the person diagnosed with monkeypox (mpox) in the state has contracted.

The vaccination campaign against mpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo is to begin on October 2, the public health institute said Thursday, as the country registered more than 24,000 cases of the virus.

Last week, the first batch of mpox vaccines arrived in the capital of Congo, the center of the outbreak. The 100,000 doses of the JYNNEOS vaccine, manufactured by the Danish company Bavarian Nordic, were donated by the EU through HERA, the bloc’s agency for health emergencies. Another 100,000 were delivered over the weekend.