“Currently, the number (of cases) is not increasing rapidly, but it is increasing.”
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The Leeds, Grenville and Lanark District Health Unit reported its first laboratory-confirmed case of monkeypox on Monday.
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The case adds to the provincial total of 133 cases as of July 6, according to Dr. Kieran Moore, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health.
However, most of those cases were centered in the Toronto area or involved someone with a connection to the city.
Moore said Ontario isn’t seeing a rapid growth in monkeypox cases and its vaccination strategy appears to be working.
“Currently, the number (of cases) is not increasing rapidly, but it is increasing,” Moore said in a recent interview. “We think it’s leveling off in Ontario, in terms of not fast growth.”
Moore said the province has been working “diligently” to vaccinate those who have contracted the virus, as well as close contacts or anyone at risk of contact.
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“More than 8,000 people have received the smallpox vaccine, which we believe has good protection against monkeypox,” he said.
The province is not looking to expand its vaccination strategy at this time, Moore said, adding that “it appears to be working.”
“Normally this dose of vaccine has two doses 28 days apart,” Moore said. “We are reviewing whether we have to go back to those 8,000 people and provide a second dose.”
Monkeypox disease comes from the same family of viruses that causes smallpox, which the World Health Organization declared eradicated worldwide in 1980. Smallpox vaccines have been shown to be effective in combating the smallpox virus. monkey pox.
Monkeypox generally does not spread easily between people and is transmitted through prolonged close contact via respiratory droplets, direct contact with broken skin or body fluids, or through contaminated clothing or bedding. Symptoms may include skin rash, oral and genital lesions, swollen lymph nodes, headache, fever, chills, myalgia, and fatigue.
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The Leeds, Grenville and Lanark District Health Unit said in a news release that the most commonly reported risk factors for developing monkeypox infection include “engaging in sexual or intimate contact (for example, hugging, kissing , hug) with new and/or more than one”. co-worker.”
Dr. Allison McGreer, an infectious disease specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, said the rise in cases in the province is “not cause for alarm” but the situation remains “relatively fragile.”
“We don’t know what it will take to get the outbreak under control,” McGreer said. “We are not completely sure that the virus has not changed enough to allow more sustained transmission to populations.”
McGreer said there is no immediate risk to the majority of the population from monkeypox.
With archives from The Canadian Press.
