Many Maritimers have watched the number of cases rise with concern – not just because of the proximity, but because the city serves as a popular weekend getaway for East Coast residents.
Read more: Quebec now has 132 monkey pox cases, with the majority in Montreal
As of Wednesday, there were no confirmed cases of monkey pox in any of the marine counties, with officials in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland & Labrador and PEI saying they were monitoring the situation in the west. Health officials in Quebec said on Tuesday that only three cases in the province needed treatment, with the three people being discharged. The story goes on under the ad Montreal’s director of public health, Dr Mylène Drouin, added that most of the 126 cases in the city involved men having sex with men. “Right now we have an outbreak that is really focused on a specific community,” he said. Globally, men who have sex with men have been disproportionately involved in the monkey pox epidemic. In a presentation to the World Health Organization earlier this month, Dr. Gianfranco Spiteri of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control reported how close skin-to-skin contact during sexual intercourse had served as the main mode of transmission abroad. The same is suspected in Canada. However, epidemiologist Susanne Gulliver, based in St. John’s, caution about messages here – said anyone can catch monkey pox, it happens to spread to the LGBTQ2 community. “It’s very sad to be associated with men having sex with men. “It’s a very, very slippery, scary slope,” he said. “As the saying goes, sometimes I just start screaming about the mistakes we made with AIDS in the 1980s,” Gulliver said. Trending Stories
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The story goes on under the ad You can get monkey pox during sex, he said, but with that kind of close contact you can also catch COVID-19 or any other communicable disease that the other person happens to have. Gulliver said not only is the inherent stigma here worrying, but it can also lead many people to have a false sense of security when potentially exposed. “People are thinking, ‘As long as I stay out of Tinder, I’ll be fine,’” he said. “But if that were the case, then we would not be vaccinating all their contacts, their families.” A variant of the smallpox vaccine has been shown to be effective against monkeypox, both of which come from the orthopedic virus family. In Montreal, dosing has been extended to sex workers and men who visit Montreal and plan to have sex with other men during their visit. “It is an additional measure we are implementing to control the epidemic,” Drouin said. It’s a little harder for Atlantic Canadians to get a shot, with at least one province in the area ruling out doses for potentially vulnerable travelers heading to Montreal. “New Brunswick does not currently provide the smallpox vaccine as a measure of exposure to monkey pox,” New Brunswick Department of Health spokeswoman Michelle Guenard wrote in a statement to Global News. The story goes on under the ad “We are focusing on risk awareness and health precautions for New Brunswick residents, and we are working with other counties on a vaccine strategy.”
Read more: Monkeypox in Canada and how NS, NB health workers react
The Nova Scotia Health Minister told Global News that they would check the information in that county, but did not receive it back within the deadline. Your best bet if you are worried? “The same thing we did for two years, we continue for three,” Gulliver said. Detailed New Brunswick public health measures including:
Stay home when you are sick or have skin sores Exercise breathing etiquette, including covering cough and sneezing and using a face mask Hand hygiene Practicing safer sex Avoid close physical contact, including sexual contact, with a person who is suspected or confirmed to have monkey pox.
2:37 WHO examines reports of smallpox traces found in monkey semen WHO examines reports of smallpox traces of monkeys found in semen
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