With 132 confirmed cases in Quebec, the province’s interim director of public health says the spread of monkeypox is slowly advancing every day and vaccination efforts are now being extended to men who expect to have sex with other men in Montreal this summer.
Quebec has 40,000 doses of the vaccine, and Montreal officials expect 25,000 doses to cover the city’s target population.
“There are certainly cases we haven’t seen because it’s an insidious disease that doesn’t show many symptoms,” Dr Luke Boylo told a news conference on Monday.
Montreal’s director of public health, Dr. Milen Druin, said the city was the epicenter of the outbreak in North America.
So far, more than 3,000 doses of the vaccine have been administered, with staff focusing on those who may have been exposed to the virus. The vaccine is now available to any man who may have sex with other men in the coming months, Druin said.
“By expanding vaccination, we are trying to prevent the spread, knowing that we will have visitors, we will have different events that will put people at risk,” she said.
“I don’t know if we can have zero cases, but we think we can at least manage the current epidemic and minimize the number of new cases.
Superspreader event in Montreal
A passenger is believed to have attended an event – now considered a super-distribution – in Montreal in late April, and this led to a surrender to the community, with the cases occurring in May, she explained.
The super-spread event happened at about the same time as other outbreaks in several European cities, she said.
The fact that there are many anonymous contacts resulting from this event makes it more difficult to track potential transmissions and control the disease, Druin said.
So far, 126 cases have been investigated in Montreal and there are three hospitalizations. There are currently no patients and most cases are not severe, she said.
Druen said 100 percent of Montreal cases were men and most had sexual intercourse with other men. She said the disease is largely spread through prolonged, intimate skin-to-skin contact.
“We currently have a focus that is really focused on a specific community,” she said.
“For the general population, we do not see new transmission chains that could connect with other groups of the population.”
This is similar to what Dr. Teresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, said the end of last week.
She said all patients were men between the ages of 20 and 63, and most had had sexual contact with other men, but she stressed that the infection could spread to anyone exposed through close contact with an infected person or infected. objects.
The WHO is discussing the monkeypox situation
The World Health Organization will convene an emergency commission next week to discuss monkeypox, as there are 1,600 confirmed and 1,500 suspected cases of monkeypox this year worldwide and 72 deaths in 39 countries, including those where the virus is common. Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Africa.
Boalo said public health is working to address the problem in Montreal and the rest of Quebec.
“We’ve done a lot of interventions, especially here in Montreal,” Boalo said.
According to Quebec public health, monkeypox can spread from the onset of symptoms until the scabs covering the skin lesions fall off and a healthy layer of skin forms. The incubation period is usually a week or less, but can last up to 21 days.
In most cases, the disease goes away on its own in two to four weeks and complications are rare, the health agency said, and high-risk contacts can be vaccinated with a single dose within four days of exposure.
Add Comment