TORONTO – The Ontario government faced a call Tuesday to create a permanent 10-day paid sick leave program in light of rising cases of monkeypox.
Ontario Public Health reported 326 confirmed cases of monkeypox in the province as of Monday, up from 288 on Thursday.
The figures came after the opposition New Democrats said a permanent paid sick leave program would curb the spread of monkeypox and other infectious diseases.
NDP lawmaker Kristyn Wong-Tam said the isolation recommendation for those sick with monkeypox could be 21 days or potentially longer.
She said the government should introduce a permanent program to allow workers to take 10 paid sick days for infectious diseases and 14 additional sick days during public health emergencies.
“The infection rate of (monkey pox) is going up,” she said at a news conference on Tuesday. “That’s why we’re raising the alarm that we can’t risk being silent.”
Ontario currently has a pandemic program that offers workers three days of paid sick leave for absences related to COVID-19, such as testing, vaccination, isolation or caring for relatives who are sick with the virus. The government recently extended this program until the end of March 2023.
Public Health Ontario reported that the majority of confirmed cases of monkeypox in the province are currently in Toronto. It said 11 people with the virus had been hospitalized, including two patients who had been treated in intensive care units. No deaths from monkeypox have been reported in Ontario.
Public health officials say most cases are among men who report intimate contact with men, but say anyone can contract monkeypox.
Wong-Tam said the spread of monkeypox is affecting the lives of her constituents in Toronto.
“Church and Wellesley Village were at the epicenter of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and suffered massive damage to major street businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said, referring to Toronto’s gay village.
“The last thing local small businesses need is another pandemic. By refusing, once again, to provide adequate and permanent paid sick leave to Ontarians in the face of the growing monkeypox public health emergency, (Premier Doug) Ford is failing to protect people’s health.
A spokesman for Ontario Labor Minister Monte McNaughton said in a statement that the government is monitoring the situation but has not made a decision on a new monkeypox sick leave policy.
The World Health Organization declared monkeypox a global emergency on Saturday. The organization’s director general said the disease had spread to more than 70 countries.
Dr. Samantha Green, a family physician at St. Michael’s Hospital Sumac Creek Health Center in Toronto, said establishing an adequate and permanent paid sick day program is an important public health measure to stop the spread of monkeypox.
“We know monkeypox is an infectious disease that spreads through person-to-person contact, and ensuring workers can stay home while they are sick is vital if we are to limit the spread and aid the recovery process the patients,” she said during the press conference with the NDP’s Wong-Tam.
“Legislating paid sick leave through labor standards is the most effective way to limit the spread of all types of infectious diseases in the workplace.”
Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s health officer, said the city had administered about 11,000 monkeypox vaccines as of Tuesday. She said interest in vaccination has increased since the World Health Organization declared the disease a global emergency.
Ontario’s Chief Health Officer, Dr. Kieran Moore, recently said monkeypox is likely to be around for “many months” because of its long incubation period.
The virus usually does not spread easily and is transmitted by prolonged close contact through respiratory droplets, direct contact with skin lesions or body fluids, or through contaminated clothing or bedding.
Common symptoms include a rash, oral and genital lesions, and swollen lymph nodes.
Monkeypox disease comes from the same family of viruses that cause smallpox, which the World Health Organization declared eradicated worldwide in 1980. Smallpox vaccines have proven effective in fighting the monkeypox virus.
– with files from Holly McKenzie-Sutter.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on July 26, 2022.
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