German health authorities on Tuesday recommended an isolation period of at least 21 days for those infected with monkeypox.

“In the early stages of an epidemic, there needs to be a tough and quick response,” Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said on Tuesday.

However, contact persons should also be quarantined for 21 days, Mr Lauterbach said, adding that he had ordered “up to 40,000 doses” of a vaccine.

He said vaccination could help contain the spread of monkeypox by offering them to contact persons, a technique known as “ring vaccination.”

Several states in Germany have reported evidence of monkeypox infections, with contact tracing underway in each location.

Mr Lauterbach said that monkeypox was “not the beginning of a new pandemic” and that it was a known pathogen with known methods of containing it.

The World Health Organisation reported about 250 cases from 16 countries where the disease had been recently detected, with WHO expert Rosamund Lewis saying in Geneva that the outbreak could be contained.

Slovenia and the Czech Republic both reported their first confirmed cases of monkeypox on Tuesday.

British health authorities said on the same day that they had administered more than 1,000 doses of the monkeypox vaccine Imvanex to contact persons.

(dpa/NAN)