Quebec has confirmed 10 more cases of monkeypox, for a total of 15 cases across the province, the provincial health ministry said Tuesday.
The province reported the first cases of the virus in Canada last week, after authorities said they were investigating 17 suspicious cases.
Health Ministry spokesman Robert Maranda says Quebec is considering asking the federal government for vaccines against the disease.
Monkeypox, which occurs mainly in West and Central Africa, is a rare viral infection similar to human smallpox, although milder. It was first recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the 1970s. The number of cases in West Africa has risen in the last decade.
Nearly 20 countries where monkeypox is not endemic have reported recent outbreaks of viral disease, with more than 230 confirmed or suspected infections, mostly in Europe.
The Canadian director of public health said Friday that authorities are investigating “a couple of dozen” possible cases of smallpox, most of them from Quebec.
Dr. Theresa Tam said the Winnipeg National Microbiology Lab is also testing BC samples.
“We don’t really know the extent of the spread in Canada. So it’s an active investigation,” Tam said Friday. “What we do know is that not many of these individuals are connected to travel to Africa, where the disease is usually seen.”
Tam said the overall risk to the population is “low” right now, but researchers are now working to determine why the monkey’s smallpox appears to be circulating in Canada and elsewhere in the Western world.
‘Containable situation’: WHO
The World Health Organization (WHO) says it has no evidence that the monkeypox virus has mutated.
On Monday morning, Dr. Rosamund Lewis, head of the smallpox secretariat, which is part of the WHO Emergency Program, said at a news conference that mutations are usually lower with the smallpox virus. of the monkey.
He says genome sequencing of the cases will help to understand the current outbreak.
Most of the more than 100 suspected and confirmed cases of a recent outbreak in Europe and North America have not been serious, said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s leader in emerging diseases and zoonoses and technical director of COVID-19.
“This is a manageable situation,” he said, especially in Europe. “But we can’t take our eyes off what is happening in Africa, in the countries where it is endemic.”