With Montreal the “epicenter” of the monkeypox outbreak in Canada and the number of cases continuing to grow, the city is shifting its focus to contain the spread of the rare disease.
Montreal Public Health said Tuesday that there are now 132 confirmed cases of the virus in Quebec, including 126 in Montreal.
Montreal’s director of public health, Dr. Mylène Drouin, offered an update to the media on Tuesday afternoon along with Quebec’s interim director of public health, Dr. Luc Boileau, who said that progress in Quebec has state “slow”, but every few days more cases are detected.
So far, public health officials have been adopting a “ring approach” to vaccinating monkeypox, offering the vaccine to close contacts of people with confirmed infections.
Dr Drouin said on Tuesday that with more people visiting the city for the festival season, the city hopes to limit the spread of the disease, which has so far been completely detected in men who have sex with other men.
From now on, public health will take a more preventative approach by offering doses to all people who may be most at risk as “an additional measure we are putting in place to control the outbreak,” Drouin said.
“If you are looking forward to coming to parties or coming to Montreal on vacation in a context where sex with other men is possible, it is really this addition that we are making today in the context of our [vaccination] campaign “.
In the coming days, people will be able to get vaccinated at a clinic without an appointment or book an appointment by visiting the government’s booking portal, Clic Santé. Additional vaccination sites are expected to be added to the Montreal area.
“I don’t know if we can have zero cases, but of course we believe we can at least manage the current outbreak and minimize the number of new cases,” Drouin said.
So far, three people who tested positive for monkeypox in Quebec have been hospitalized, but have since been released, according to Boileau. No one is currently hospitalized with the disease, which has mild symptoms in the vast majority of cases.
Smallpox is a rare disease that spreads through close and prolonged contact with another person through air droplets, skin-to-skin contact, and body fluids.
It comes from the same family of viruses that cause smallpox and is known to cause skin lesions.
The Ministry of Health began offering the smallpox vaccine on May 27. So far, more than 3,000 doses have been given, Boileau said Tuesday.