The Canadian Public Health Agency verified 890 cases of monkeypox in the country. These cases were reported from various sections of the country, including Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Yukon, according to Xinhua.
The virus that causes monkeypox is being tested at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory. Furthermore, the laboratory is performing whole genome sequencing, a type of advanced fingerprint analysis, on monkeypox samples from Canada.
The current epidemic has been labeled a public health emergency of worldwide concern by the World Health Organization as it has affected several different parts of the world including different countries from around the globe. The Canadian government is on the go to make legal actions against the disease to manage public health reactions.
According to experts, monkeypox is a viral illness that may be passed from person to person by close contact with an infected individual, such as hugs, kisses, massages, or sexual intercourse.
The amount is more than 15 times greater than the five confirmed cases reported countrywide by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) late last month. While homosexual and bisexual males have had a disproportionate number of cases in this monkeypox epidemic, Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam warned reporters Friday that all groups are possibly susceptible to the illness.
The emergence of the virus:
Smallpox and monkeypox are members of the same viral family, and the smallpox vaccination has previously proven effective against monkeypox. However, that vaccine has not been available in Canada for decades because smallpox was eliminated in the late 1940s.
Monkeypox is a viral zoonotic disease that mostly affects tropical rainforests. Most instances had previously been documented in the Congo Basin. Researchers have been perplexed by the appearance of this virus in Western countries. To date, the WHO has documented at least 550 cases of monkeypox in 30 countries where the virus is not thought to be prevalent.
Dr. David Heymann, who briefly headed WHO’s emergencies department, told The Associated Press that the dominant idea to explain the disease’s spread is sexual transmission among gay and bisexual men during two raves in Spain and Belgium.
Authorities are looking into probable links between a recent Pride festival in the Canary Islands, which drew 80,000 people, and incidents at a Madrid sauna, according to Enrique Ruiz Escudero. Authorities in Portugal and Spain likewise stated that their instances were men who had primarily sex with other men and whose infections were discovered after they sought treatment for lesions at sexual health clinics.
About vaccine:
Most provincial public health organizations across the country have begun to provide one dose of a smallpox vaccine to those who are eligible, either as a pre-exposure treatment or as post-exposure protection.
The shot being offered in Canada is Imvamune has been recommended as an effective form of protection against monkeypox by the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI).
Up till now, the federal government has provided about 70,000 doses of the vaccine to provinces and territories so far, with approximately 27,000 doses administered.
