Monkeypox continues to spread in Canada – especially in Quebec, Canada’s chief public health official said Friday.
Speaking to reporters, Dr. Teresa Tam said 112 cases of the disease had been found across the country – 98 in Quebec. There are nine cases in Ontario, four in Alberta and one in British Columbia.
There he said that all patients were men between the ages of 20 and 63. Most of them had sexual intercourse with other men.
“We are learning all the time about this virus that we have not seen outside of Africa,” Tam said.
There he said that doctors test people who have rashes and sometimes find diseases other than monkeypox.
“They test a lot of people who are actually negative for monkeypox, but positive for other things,” she said.
“This is one way of throwing the net at the forefront of public health, and some of these individuals who have been tested actually have very minimal skin lesions, but they are still being tested and we are finding other causes.”
There, he said, the public health agency is also examining wastewater and other surveillance systems to detect cases of monkeypox and antibody levels in different populations.
He said genetic analysis showed that the strain of monkeypox circulating in Canada was the same as circulating internationally. She said a number of super-spread events seem to have contributed to the spread.
There, he said that doses of a vaccine effective against monkeypox were given to people at higher risk of exposure, and health officials recommended that people receive the vaccine within four days of exposure. While the disease can be spread through sexual contact, it can also be spread through things like bedding, she added.
The Public Health Agency said it could not confirm how many suspicious cases there were across the country.
While the federal government’s high-level laboratory in Winnipeg ran all the tests, she began working with the provinces to enable provincial laboratories to test.
Add Comment