Montreal Public Health Extends Monkeypox Vaccination to Tourists

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Tourists visiting Montreal can now get vaccinated against monkeypoxsays the city’s public health department.

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The agency says nearly 10,000 people have been vaccinated against the infectious disease, but the vaccination rate has dropped. There is enough smallpox vaccine available in the city to expand the campaign to tourists, which will help reduce risk to Montrealers, said Dr. Geneviève Bergeron, medical officer for health emergencies and infectious diseases at the department. city ​​public health. .

The change comes as Montreal is seeing a slight increase in monkeypox cases, after what Bergeron said was starting to look like a plateau. The trend is consistent with data from other provinces, including Ontario and British Columbia, as well as from around the world.

“Last week there was a spike, not a huge increase, but still a trend that seemed to be slightly increasing and that caught our attention,” Bergeron said. “So we are keeping a close eye on it. … There is a long incubation period, so there could be variations in that regard.”

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As of Tuesday, a total of 184 monkeypox cases had been confirmed in Montreal, with another 75 probable cases and eight more suspected. The latest update from Quebec, also on Tuesday, indicated that 284 cases have been declared in the province since the start of the outbreak on May 27.

Since eligibility for the vaccine is already “very broad” among the group in which almost all cases have been identified (men who have sex with men), Montreal’s public health focus amid the surge is to promote the vaccine Bergeron said.

“In the beginning, there were a lot of people who wanted to get vaccinated and it’s still making progress, but there’s a slowdown in the pace,” he said. “So we want to promote it where there are people and communicate it well.”

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As of Tuesday, a total of 9,781 doses of vaccine had been administered in Montreal, out of 10,832 in the entire province.

The campaign initially focused on people who had been exposed to infections or attended events where cases arose. It was then expanded in June to include people at risk who had not been exposed, to proactively protect them.

“We’re really following the epidemiological data to guide us on that,” Bergeron said. “People who are in Montreal and plan to have sex in Montreal, even if they are not currently in Montreal, already have access to the vaccine.”

Partner organizations are on the ground to help spread the word within the community, in what Bergeron described as a “really admirable mobilization”.

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Another way to target tourists during the summer will be through push notifications for dating app users who identify with the community.

Dr. Réjean Thomas is the founder and director of the L’Actuel clinic in the center, which specializes in the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and is where some of the first suspected cases of monkeypox in the city were identified. . He said that he believes this weekend is the time to vaccinate as many people as possible.

Montreal Pride and the 24th International AIDS Conference at the Palais des congrès are just weeks away, Thomas said, and it takes about a week for the vaccine to take effect.

He said he has been surprised by the number of high-risk patients in his clinic who have not been vaccinated.

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“There was a craze for vaccination in the beginning, but now people tell us, ‘Well, nobody talks about it anymore,’” he said. “To those who are not vaccinated, I tell them what I see, and what I see is not very pretty. People are suffering. … It is very painful.”

Thomas wants to remind people that the vaccine is the way to slow the spread, and while monkeypox may not be deadly, it is extremely unpleasant and can lead to complications.

“Some people had (ulcers) in their mouths,” he said. “We had a patient who was hospitalized because he couldn’t eat. They are really painful ulcers, and people will be isolated for two to four weeks in the middle of summer. … People will lose money if they can’t go to work.”

On Wednesday, Montreal Public Health said it is aware of four monkeypox-related hospitalizations so far, including two for airway obstruction risks, one for a person’s eye problem and one for myocarditis. .

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Dr. Michael Libman, a professor of medicine at McGill University and a specialist in infectious diseases and tropical medicine, noted that while there have been few hospitalizations so far and these have been mostly related to sores, “cases have been largely concentrated in people who are relatively young and relatively healthy.

“But there is a fear, of course, that it will spread further … to immunocompromised people,” he said. “That it spreads to older people … outside of this community where we don’t expect them to get terribly sick because they’re relatively young and healthy, and that’s always been the fear.”

Libman added that some of the severe cases of monkeypox in Africa have occurred among children.

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“We were very, very lucky that somehow the kids didn’t have serious illness (with COVID),” he said. “That is not the case even for most infectious diseases. … Pretty much any kind of infection, kids do worse… and for monkeypox, I wouldn’t count on kids being okay. And honestly, I’d rather not find out.

Bergeron said monkeypox reaching other populations has been a concern since the beginning of the outbreak.

“What we are seeing, with the phenomenon of the emergence of this disease that was endemic in some African countries and is emerging simultaneously in different countries, it is worrying to see the situations,” he said. “We’re still pretty early in the evolution of this new phenomenon, but it’s definitely worrying to watch.”

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Thomas, for his part, remains concerned about the LGBTQ2+ community. On a given day at his clinic, he receives three to five walk-ins and another two or three referred by health authorities. About two or three a day end up testing positive for monkeypox. The average age among them is 39 years.

“My message is to vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate as much as possible,” he said. “Second, if you have questionable lesions on your genitals or elsewhere, get tested. Continue with prevention and prudence if you are sexually active. Be careful.”

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