The Canadian Press Published Friday, June 3, 2022, 2:55 PM EDT Last Updated on Friday, June 3, 2022, 4:58 PM EDT
OTTAWA – Canada’s chief public health official says the world needs to build better defenses against transmissible viruses as climate change and other factors increase the risk of seeing more infectious diseases emerge in the coming years.
Dr. Teresa’s comments come as Canada has already confirmed 77 cases of monkeypox, 71 in Quebec, five in Ontario and one in Alberta.
Worldwide, there are at least 550 confirmed cases in 30 non-endemic countries where the virus is not usually detected. It is the largest outbreak outside West and Central Africa, where it is now endemic in at least 10 countries.
The World Health Organization has not said where the current epidemic began, but WHO Director-General Tedros Adanom Gebreyesus said on Wednesday that “the sudden appearance of monkeypox in many countries at the same time suggests there may have been an undetected transmission for some time.”
He said that the cases in Canada currently involve a specific group of people who have close, intimate sexual contact, but that may change.
“At the moment, it has not exceeded many of the initial risk groups, but it could happen and we must be ready for it,” she said.
Public health officials said that although everyone is susceptible to the virus, groups of cases have been reported among men who have sex with men.
Tam’s deputy, Dr. Howard Nju, said he was referring to the potential for stigma and discrimination, and stressed that the spread of the virus was not limited to a specific group.
There, he said, from a broader perspective, Canada and the rest of the world need to be better equipped when outbreaks like this occur.
“Infectious disease can always hit us,” she said. “And we need to be as prepared as possible, which means strengthening global public health capacity.
There, he said that improving capacity in any country is “really important” because with climate change and other factors, there is more interaction between humans and animals, which is often the way animal-borne viruses turn into human pandemics. .
“I think we will see an increase in these types of emerging infectious diseases and with good capacity, not only in Canada but worldwide, we can help manage them and reduce their impact as much as possible,” Tam said.
The first non-endemic cases of monkeypox were confirmed in the United Kingdom in early May. The first cases were confirmed in Canada on May 19.
African scientists and doctors are tired of the sudden interest in monkeypox as it infects Western countries, which have largely ignored the virus as it spreads to parts of Africa.
There on Friday, he called it a “neglected tropical disease.”
“We need to have better international cooperation and support to learn together globally,” she said.
Monkeypox got its name from the fact that it was first discovered in monkeys in a laboratory in Denmark in 1958, but in the wild it is found mainly in small rodents such as rats, squirrels and shrews.
A global population, exhausted after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, is watching the arrival of the monkeypox with anxiety and fear, even though the virus is not spreading in the air like the one causing COVID-19.
Instead, the monkeypox virus spreads mainly through close contact with the virus to other people or objects such as bedding. Although it can be fatal, most often it is not, causing symptoms such as fever, headache and muscle aches and measles-like skin lesions.
It can take one to two weeks for an infected person to show symptoms, and Tam warned that while we know a lot about how the monkeypox virus behaves in countries where it is endemic, we know little about how it can behave in populations. who are both mostly unvaccinated against it and have no natural levels of immunity.
A smallpox vaccine has also been approved for use against monkeypox, and Canada has a supply of the vaccine. Some doses have already been sent to Quebec to vaccinate close contacts on known cases, and Tam said talks with each province are ongoing to determine whether some should be “offered” across the country.
She said tracking contacts was proving difficult and although a large-scale public campaign to vaccinate against monkeypox was not expected, the existing campaign could be expanded to try to end the outbreak in Canada.
This Canadian Press report was first published on June 3, 2022.
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