Ottawa Public Health offers vaccinations to eligible clients at its sexual health clinic and operates ongoing vaccination clinics at the Centretown Community Health Center.
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A month after the first case was identified in Ottawa, 11 cases of monkeypox have been confirmed in the city, says Public Health Ontario.
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Most of the cases in Ontario remain centered in Toronto, where 124 have been laboratory confirmed. Cases are also starting to show up in smaller centres, including Leeds, Grenville and Lanark, which reported their first confirmed case earlier this week.
There are now 156 confirmed cases of monkeypox in Ontario and eight suspected cases: all but one of whom are male.
The average age of confirmed cases is 37.3 years, and the most common symptoms reported include rash, oral or genital lesions, swollen lymph nodes, headache, fever, chills, myalgia, and fatigue.
Only nine of the people with confirmed cases have had to be hospitalized, according to PAHO.
The province’s medical director of health, Dr. Kieran Moore, recently noted that there has been no rapid growth in monkeypox cases, which he attributed to the vaccination strategy.
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More than 8,000 people across the province have been given the smallpox vaccine which is being given to those who contract the virus, their close contacts and anyone considered at risk.
Ottawa Public Health offers the vaccine to eligible clients at its sexual health clinic and operates ongoing vaccination clinics at the Centretown Community Health Center.
The vaccine is available to people who have been exposed to the virus and people who have been diagnosed with a bacterial sexually transmitted infection in the past two months, have had two or more sexual partners in the past 21 days, have attended a of sexual contact within 21 days, had anonymous casual sex during the same time period, or had sex for work.
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Monkeypox, which belongs to the same family as smallpox, had rarely been seen outside of Africa, where it is endemic, until this year, when cases began to spread in many parts of the world.
On Tuesday, as global cases hit 9,200, the World Health Organization announced it would convene a second emergency meeting next week to determine whether monkeypox posed a global health threat.
Cases have been reported in 63 countries since the beginning of this year. There were just over 6,000 cases reported globally as recently as July 4.
Health officials say monkeypox, which causes a rash and lesions along with flu-like symptoms, is not a sexually transmitted disease and can spread through close contact. Most cases to date have been among men who have had sex with men.
The virus can enter the body through broken skin, the respiratory tract, or the mucous membrane, including the eyes, nose, or mouth.
The risk of infection is low for the general population, says the Public Health Agency of Canada.
