Quebec has 40,000 doses of the vaccine and Montreal officials expect 25,000 doses to reach the target population in the city. “There are definitely cases we have not seen because it is an insidious disease that does not show many symptoms,” Dr Lick Boyle told a news conference on Monday. Montreal’s director of public health, Dr. Mylène Drouin, said the city was the epicenter of the North American epidemic. To date, more than 3,000 doses of the vaccine have been administered, with officials focusing on those who may have been exposed to the virus. The vaccine is now available to any man who can have sex with other men in the coming months, Drouin said. “By expanding the vaccine, we are trying to prevent it from spreading, knowing that we will have visitors, we will have different events, that will put people at risk,” he said. “I do not know if we can have zero cases, but we believe we can at least manage the current outbreak and minimize the number of new cases.”
Superspreader Event in Montreal
A traveler is believed to have attended an event – now considered an overdose event – in Montreal in late April, which led to a community outbreak, with cases occurring in May, he explained. The outbreak occurred at about the same time as other outbreaks in several European cities, he said. The fact that there are many anonymous contacts coming from this incident makes it more difficult to identify possible transmissions and limit the disease, Drouin said. So far, 126 cases have been investigated in Montreal and there have been three hospitalizations. There are currently no patients in the hospital and most cases are not serious, he said. Drouin said that 100 percent of the cases in Montreal were men and most had sex with other men. He said the disease spreads greatly through prolonged, close skin-to-skin contact. “Right now we have an outbreak that is really focused on a specific community,” he said. “For the general population, we do not see new transmission chains that could connect with other groups in the population.” This is similar to what Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s head of public health, said at the end of last week. He said all the patients were men between the ages of 20 and 63 and most had sex with other men, but stressed that the infection could be spread to anyone exposed through close contact with an infected person or infected objects.
WHO discusses the smallpox status of monkeys
The World Health Organization will convene an emergency committee next week to discuss monkey pox, as 1,600 confirmed and 1,500 suspected cases of monkey pox have been reported worldwide this year and 72 deaths in 39 countries, including those where the virus is most common. Smallpox is endemic to parts of Africa. Boileau said public health was working to address the issue in Montreal and the rest of Quebec. “We have done a lot of interventions, especially here in Montreal,” Boileau said. According to Quebec Public Health, monkey pox 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 resolves on its own in two to four weeks and complications are rare, the health service says, and high-risk contacts can be vaccinated with a single dose within four days of exposure.
