An alert has been issued by the Victorian department of health after a dramatic spike in cases of mpox in the state over the past few months.
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00:00Well, we've seen a pretty steep rise in cases here in Victoria, about 100 more since June,
00:07bringing the total outbreak to 120 cases.
00:11Now, we have seen the World Health Organization declare a global health emergency when it
00:18comes to MPOCs, and that's due to an outbreak that's coming out of Central Africa.
00:24Now, there are two types of MPOCs.
00:27There's clade 1 and clade 2.
00:29The type we're seeing in that region is clade 1.
00:33This is a form of the disease that is more associated with poor outcomes, death, severe
00:39illness.
00:40That's not the type we're seeing here in Australia, at least for now.
00:43The type we're seeing here is the type we saw back when we had an outbreak in 2022.
00:49That's clade 2.
00:51This one is less associated with severe illness.
00:54Now, nonetheless, it is important that people are aware of symptoms.
01:00Some people, well, most people rather, do recover quite quickly from the illness, but
01:04some people can be hospitalized and become quite unwell.
01:07So the symptoms are a sore throat, a fever, chills, and a distinct rash.
01:14And authorities are telling anyone who is experiencing those symptoms to go and get
01:19checked out.
01:20It is a communicable disease.
01:22The other thing they're telling people to do is to get vaccinated, especially if they're
01:26in a vulnerable group of people.
01:29That's people who they say are men who have sex with other men, gay men, bisexual men.
01:34This is the group who they're really concentrating on with their vaccination campaign.
01:38And if you are considered a vulnerable person, vaccinations are free.
01:42So this is definitely something that state authorities here are working to get on top
01:47of and indeed health authorities all over the world.
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