Vaccine supply shortage comes at a bad time, as African countries make headway with their outbreaks and have seen good uptake in affected populations.
Amid promising signs, officials urged caution, noting that the outbreaks vary by clade, response measures, and social behaviors.
Clinical trials of Jynneos have begun or will begin soon in infants and children 2 years old and younger, and in pregnant or breastfeeding women.
Twenty five countries have reported outbreaks, including newly affected Sierra Leone where infections are surging.
Amid an ongoing vaccine shortage, more doses are arriving this week from Japan and France.
The ARTIC 2.0 project will expand use of a low-cost, real-time genome sequencing technique used to detect COVID-19 variants to conduct surveillance on a wider variety of pathogens.
About 6 in 10 presented accurate information on symptoms, preventive measures, and testing locations.
The freeze-dried formulation will be easier to store and transport than the liquid-frozen formulation that Bavarian Nordic has been supplying to the US government.
Healthcare workers remain the most trusted sources of information (73%), while trust in the federal government to provide factual information rose to 58%.
The cases in Malawi bring the number of African countries affected by mpox to 23.
In Uganda, the virus is spreading in urban areas and among sexual networks, posing contact-tracing challenges.
Clade 1b is fueling a central Africa mpox outbreak, with the Democratic Republic of the Congo seeing the most cases.
Earlier patients had traveled to outbreak countries or were contacts of earlier cases.
The freeze-dried Jynneos formulation will be easier to store and transport and will have a longer shelf life.
In its monthly mpox update, the WHO said it is tracking several genetic developments, including rising cases of the rare 2b clade.
So far this year Brazil has reported 52 cases of mpox, but all were clade 2.
In other developments, the recently identified clade 1a virus that has the APOBEC3 mutation, linked to more transmissibility, has been reported from Kinshasa.
Contacts of the patient are being closely monitored and offered preventive vaccination.
The pooled prevalence of conjunctivitis in mpox was 9%, followed by impaired vision (4%), keratitis (3%), and eye lesions (3%).
Close adherence to glove-wearing and other standard precautions likely protected residents, the authors say.
Like other recent cases, the patient had traveled to Uganda, one of Africa's clade 1b mpox hot spots.
In other developments, the WHO says violence in the eastern DR Congo complicates the country's mpox response and that Azerbaijan has reported its first case.
In the region's other developments, Sierra Leone reported more cases, with the first two linked to the clade 2 global strain.
The UK mpox patient had recently returned from Uganda, where clade 1b is spreading in the community.
The ECDC says there have been 11 cases in Europe since August 2024, all mild.
