On May 14, 2026, the CDC added Mauritius to its active travel health notice list with a new chikungunya outbreak alert — making Mauritius the fourth country or territory on the CDC's current active chikungunya warning roster, joining Suriname (since February 2026), Mayotte (since March 10, 2026), and French Guiana (since June 4, 2026). The scale of simultaneous chikungunya outbreaks across two continents and two ocean basins represents the widest geographic spread of concurrent CDC chikungunya travel notices since the catastrophic Indian Ocean outbreaks of 2005 and 2006, which infected an estimated 1.4 million people across Réunion, Mauritius, Mayotte, and the Comoros islands in a single epidemic wave.
Mauritius is a volcanic island nation located in the southwest Indian Ocean, approximately 2,000 kilometers off the southeastern coast of Africa, situated between Madagascar and the Australian subcontinent. It is one of Africa and the Indian Ocean's most sought-after tourist destinations — known for its beaches, resorts, water sports, and biodiversity — and receives hundreds of thousands of international visitors annually, including a significant number of Americans traveling via direct flights from European hubs.
