The Canadian Press
Virginie Ann
Mylene Drouin gives a briefing in Montreal on Wednesday, February 24, 2021. Public health authorities say they are opening the monkeypox vaccine to all men who plan to have sex with other men. Montreal’s director of public health told reporters that men who visit Montreal and plan to have sex with other men during their visit, as well as sex workers, will be among those eligible for vaccination. Photo by Paul Chiasson / The Canadian Press
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MONTREAL – Calling Montreal the epicenter of the North American monkey pox epidemic, city health officials said Tuesday that they are extending the vaccine to all men who have sex with men.
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Montreal’s director of public health, Dr. Mylene Drouin told reporters that the city’s vaccination campaign “is an additional measure we are implementing to control the epidemic”. Prior to Tuesday, the vaccine was given to close contact with infections or to men who had sex with two or more men over a period of time. “We ask men who go or have sex with men in Montreal in the summer, in the coming weeks or months, we offer them the vaccine.” The Quebec Department of Health announced Tuesday that there are 132 confirmed cases of the disease in the county, with 126 in Montreal. Last Friday, Canada’s public health chief said there were 98 cases in Quebec, for a total of 112 cases nationwide.
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Drouen said all the smallpox cases of monkeys found so far in the city were among men, most of whom had sex with other men. “We had a superspreader event (in Montreal) in late April, linked to other cases in the UK and Belgium,” he said. The evolution of the virus in the city is not worrying, he said, but added that the summer will bring more tourists to the city and more opportunities for people to spread the virus. “In this context, we want to extend vaccination to a larger group of people.” The interim director of public health of Quebec, Dr. Luc Boileau told reporters that about 3,000 people have been vaccinated against the disease in the province since late May. “We are not in a (vaccination) campaign for the whole population, but only for those at risk,” Boileau said. Quebec, he added, has ordered 40,000 doses of the vaccine, with up to 25,000 destined for Montreal.
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“We are confident that we have enough installments to cover people at risk,” Boileau said, adding that Quebec residents will have priority over tourists visiting the city in the summer. Drouin said that aphids, which belong to the same family as smallpox viruses, generally do not spread easily between humans and are transmitted through prolonged close contact, direct contact with skin lesions or body fluids, or through contaminated clothing or bedding. He said three people had been hospitalized since the beginning of the epidemic, but all had been discharged. Most cases, he added, were not serious and included symptoms such as skin lesions, fever, headaches, as well as joint and muscle pain. Meanwhile, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday he had decided to convene an emergency committee on June 23 because the virus had shown “unusual” recent behavior spreading to countries far beyond Africa. is endemic. The Center said more than 1,600 cases and nearly 1,500 suspected cases have been reported in 39 countries this year. This Canadian Press report was first published on June 14, 2022. – With files from the Associated Press. – This story was created with the financial support of Meta and the Canadian Press News Fellowship.
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