The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a Level-2 travel notice for Mauritius after the island reported a large locally acquired chikungunya outbreak in 2026, its first in years. The vaccine is now part of the standard pre-travel preparation, with the standard pregnant-traveller caveats.
Until this year, Mauritius had gone years without a locally acquired chikungunya case. That run ended in January 2026. By mid-May, the island was in the middle of its first large outbreak in years. On 14 May 2026, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention escalated the situation to a Level-2 travel health notice, the formal "practice enhanced precautions" tier, and recommended vaccination for travellers visiting affected areas.
Mauritius is a tourist economy. Many readers of this site will fly to Mauritius this summer, this winter, or the one after. The 14 May CDC notice is the single most useful pre-travel document published about the island this quarter, and what it says deserves to be read carefully.
What is actually happening on the island
Chikungunya is transmitted by Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, the two urban container-breeding mosquitoes. Both bite by day and at dusk and breed in small water containers (plant saucers, tyres, blocked guttering, animal-feeding bowls). Neither needs dense urban tropical conditions to sustain transmission. The 2005-2006 Indian Ocean epidemic infected an estimated 38.2% of Réunion's population, the reference point for how far the virus can spread once it reaches a susceptible population.
The case curve since January has run in one direction. February's count exceeded January's, and March and April continued the climb. ECDC's worldwide overview tracks the outbreak across the Western Indian Ocean and records the cases on Mauritius Island.
The Western Indian Ocean is now a multi-island arc
Mauritius is one node in a four-island chikungunya pattern that has now run for roughly eighteen months.
Réunion experienced a chikungunya outbreak in 2025. Réunion is a French overseas department and was the original European-administered foothold for chikungunya during the 2005-2006 Indian Ocean epidemic; its 2025 cycle reactivated the region's vector-control machinery and put traveller-imported cases on Santé publique France's daily watch.
Mauritius is now the second island to fall into active local transmission. CDC's 14 May notice is the formal recognition that the country has crossed the threshold from "imported risk" to "endemic outbreak."
Mayotte, also a French overseas department in the Mozambique Channel, has reported a renewed increase in case numbers since epidemiological week 3 of 2026.
Madagascar reported 29 confirmed chikungunya cases as of 8 February 2026, concentrated in three regions: Mahajanga (highest concentration), Toamasina, and Antsirabe.
Read as a single regional story, the Western Indian Ocean chikungunya axis is now an eighteen-month, four-territory event. None of these islands is geographically far from any other. The ECDC monthly chikungunya bulletins are the cleanest single source for the joined-up regional picture, and Mosticare's editorial position is that anyone tracking either Mauritius travel risk or European traveller-imported transmission should be reading the ECDC monthly first.
What the CDC notice actually recommends
The Level-2 notice is built around four practical pieces of advice. None of them is novel; all of them are unimprovable.
Vaccination. Two chikungunya vaccines have received regulatory approvals in several countries and are recommended for use in populations at risk, but they are not yet widely available or in widespread use. Ixchiq holds an EU marketing authorisation for chikungunya. Vimkunya holds an EU marketing authorisation for chikungunya. CDC recommends vaccination for travellers visiting outbreak areas, with the standard caveat that pregnant travellers should defer vaccination until after delivery unless the risk of infection is high and unavoidable. Travellers should seek advice from a travel health professional at least four to six weeks ahead of departure, to allow the immune response to develop and to permit a discussion of contraindications.
Insect repellent. The standard CDC advice is an EPA-registered repellent with one of these active ingredients: DEET, picaridin, IR3535, or oil of lemon eucalyptus, applied to all exposed skin and to clothing where appropriate. Aedes albopictus bites by day, so application discipline matters from morning to early evening, not just at dusk.
Clothing. Long sleeves and long trousers. Ae. albopictus will bite through tight-fitting fabric, but loose long-sleeved clothing is materially harder for the mosquito to access than bare skin or shorts.
Accommodation. Air-conditioning or intact screens on windows and doors. Mauritian luxury resorts overwhelmingly meet both criteria. Smaller guesthouses, self-catering apartments, and the central-plateau hotel stock where some travellers stay between the airport and the coast vary more, this is the question most worth asking the accommodation provider ahead of booking.
The personal-protection layer most worth investing in for a Mauritius trip this year is the structural one, the screened or air-conditioned room, the long-sleeved evening clothing, the vaccine done in advance, rather than the aerosol can. Repellent works, but it works for hours; the room and the vaccine work for the trip.
What to watch next
Two signals are worth tracking through the rest of 2026.
The first is whether the Mauritius case curve crests in May or continues into the southern-hemisphere winter. The first months capture the first phase; the late-May and June numbers will tell us whether the outbreak is following the typical Indian Ocean seasonal pattern or extending past it.
The second is European traveller-imported transmission. The 2025 European autochthonous chikungunya cluster pattern, documented across France's eight transmission régions in last summer's Bilan, was seeded by traveller-imported cases from the Western Indian Ocean. With Mauritius, Réunion, Mayotte, and Madagascar all active simultaneously, the 2026 European import volume is going to be higher than 2025's was. France's Santé publique France runs enhanced chikungunya surveillance from 1 May to 30 November, and the 2026 activation is partly an institutional response to this exact dynamic.
Sources cited
- CDC, Chikungunya in Mauritius (Level-2 Travel Health Notice), 14 May 2026, via the Internet Archive, http://web.archive.org/web/20260814001928/https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/level2/chikungunya-mauritius
- European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Chikungunya virus disease worldwide overview (monthly), https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/chikungunya-monthly
- World Health Organization, Chikungunya fact sheet, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/chikungunya
- European Medicines Agency, Ixchiq (chikungunya vaccine) EPAR, https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/EPAR/ixchiq
- European Medicines Agency, Vimkunya (chikungunya vaccine) EPAR, https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/EPAR/vimkunya
- US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Preventing mosquito bites, https://www.cdc.gov/mosquitoes/prevention/index.html
- Santé publique France, Chikungunya, dengue et Zika en France hexagonale. Bilan 2025, https://www.santepubliquefrance.fr/maladies-a-transmission-vectorielle/chikungunya/bulletin-national/chikungunya-dengue-et-zika-en-france-hexagonale-bilan-2025
- Santé publique France, Chikungunya: data for mainland France, https://www.santepubliquefrance.fr/en/chikungunya/data-mainland-france
- Renault P et al., Estimating Chikungunya prevalence in La Réunion Island outbreak by serosurveys, PMC PMC2528011, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2528011/
- European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Chikungunya virus disease worldwide overview, 12 March 2026, via the Internet Archive, http://web.archive.org/web/20260312042306/https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/chikungunya-monthly
- National Travel Health Network and Centre (NaTHNaC), Chikungunya in Madagascar, 24 March 2026, https://travelhealthpro.org.uk/updates.php?base=4678
- NHS, Travel vaccinations, https://www.nhs.uk/vaccinations/travel-vaccinations/
This article is general information, not medical advice. Ask a doctor or pharmacist about your own health.