Priya Alexander

housing, crowding, sanitation, but also identifying people who are at high risk of this infection, treating them early and eradicating the infection.

So this has been a multi-system response which has been successful.

Wow.

Fascinating.

It is, wow, and it's good news.

It's a good news story.

From one infectious disease to another, MPOCs.

Rears its head again?

It does.

It does rear its head again.

So people might remember there was a smaller outbreak in 2022 in Australia and a larger outbreak in 2024.

But there's a study that's been published in eClinical Medicine, which has looked at, well, probably given us the first proper taste of how we're doing when it comes to vaccine coverage against MPOCs.

Well, a lot of the data before has relied on community-based surveys.

Right.

So asking people, have you been vaccinated?

How many doses of the vaccine have you had?

This is a study that's actually relied on data from the Australian Immunisation Register and the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System, and it's looked between 2022 and 2024.

And it really gives a glimpse at how we're doing with vaccine coverage, remembering that there are some people who are at higher risk of MPOC.

So men who are bisexual, gay, men who have sex with other men, sex workers, there are certain people who are at higher risk.

And the question is, how protected are these higher risk individuals when it comes to MPOCs with vaccination?