Cape Town social gathering linked to Mpox cluster as SA cases surge to 18

In Cape Town, a single social gathering has become the quiet origin point of South Africa's growing Mpox cluster, now numbering 18 confirmed cases across the Western Cape. As is so often true in the story of infectious disease, the outbreak began not with malice but with unknowing — one or two people carrying a virus they could not yet feel, moving through a crowd in ordinary closeness. Health authorities are now tracing the ripples outward, a reminder that human togetherness, one of our most essential needs, can also be the condition under which invisible things travel fastest.