British Columbia health officials say there are no suspected cases of monkeypox in the province, as concerns are growing in other parts of Canada.
British Columbia health officials say there are no suspected cases of monkeypox in the province, as concerns are growing in other parts of Canada.
Smallpox is a rare disease that comes from the same family of viruses as smallpox. This virus causes smallpox, which the World Health Organization declared eradicated worldwide in 1980. It is also linked to the vaccine virus used in the smallpox vaccine.
The Public Health Agency of Canada, which is investigating about two dozen possible cases of monkeypox in addition to five confirmed cases in Quebec, says it is spreading through prolonged close contact. This involves direct contact with respiratory droplets, body fluids or wounds of an infected person and is not very contagious in a typical social environment.
The British Columbia Disease Control Center said on Friday it was not investigating any suspected cases or possible contacts of monkeypox in the province after ruling out two potential contacts.
The risk of smallpox is low, but almost everyone in Canada is susceptible because routine smallpox vaccination ended decades ago, senior public health officials said Friday.
Dr Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, said the Federal Public Health Agency did not know how widespread the disease was in the country.
Monkeypox is usually milder than smallpox and can cause fever, headache, muscle aches, exhaustion, swollen lymph nodes and lesions all over the body.
There is global evidence that smallpox vaccines may offer protection against monkeypox.
But Canada stopped routinely immunizing people against smallpox in 1972.
Tam’s deputy, Dr. Howard Nju, said it meant everyone was susceptible to monkeypox.
“I would say that the whole population is susceptible to monkeypox,” Nju said on Friday.
Canada maintains a small stockpile of smallpox vaccine in the event of a biological accident, such as laboratory exposure.
Several cases in the United Kingdom have led the country to start offering the vaccine to healthcare professionals and close contacts to confirmed cases.
He said Canada was considering such a strategy.
“Quebec has had some interest in contacts, so this is being discussed at the moment, but, of course, we need to know some of the epidemiology as soon as possible,” Tam said.
She will not say how many doses of the smallpox vaccine Canada has, citing security concerns.
Public services and procurement in Canada announced a tender last month to purchase 500,000 doses of the Imvamune measles vaccine on behalf of the Public Health Agency of Canada from 2023 to 2028.
“Although smallpox is currently considered eradicated, PHAC is stockpiling a vaccine to immunize Canadians against smallpox if there is ever a risk of smallpox being intentionally or unintentionally released,” the tender said.
The product is also approved by Health Canada for the prevention of monkeypox.
The company announced on Thursday that it had struck a deal with an unnamed European country to supply its vaccine in response to cases of monkeypox.
There is still a sense of mystery surrounding the sudden outbreak of the virus in Canada, the United States, Australia and several parts of Europe.
“Not many of these people are involved in traveling to Africa, where the disease is common, so this is unusual. “It’s unusual for the world to see so many cases reported in different countries outside of Africa,” Tam said.
Canadian health systems are throwing a wide web in search of more cases, she said, because not enough is known about why the virus is suddenly appearing around the world.
“There have probably been some hidden transmission chains that could emerge in a matter of weeks, given the kind of global situation we’re seeing right now,” she said.
Nju said global public health authorities should be open to the idea that monkeypox is evolving and transmission may have changed.
So far, samples of suspected cases are being sent to the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, but the PHAC is working with the provinces to create more local diagnostics.
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