The Public Health Agency of Canada is urging gay and bisexual men to practice safe sex and limit the number of sexual partners they have as they deal with the monkeypox outbreak.
Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s director of public health, told a news conference Wednesday that while the “global outbreak of monkeypox is a serious concern,” public health officials and governments have a “window of ‘opportunity to contain the spread’.
So far, Tam said, the disease has been almost exclusively limited to men: 99 percent of infected people in Canada are men and over 36. Most of the reported cases in Canada have been among men who have sex with men. she said
Tam said the outbreak Canada is experiencing can be stopped by using strategies that target the right groups of people.
Those strategies, he said, could include a public awareness campaign focused on gay and bisexual men through community organizations, educational settings and dating apps like Grindr.
“At this time, to reduce the overall risk of contracting and spreading the monkeypox virus, PHAC recommends practicing safer sex,” Tam said. “Having fewer sexual partners, especially anonymous partners, even when they don’t have symptoms, can also reduce the risk of becoming infected.”
Tam said little is known about how monkeypox spreads, how people can be protected and whether asymptomatic carriers can spread it to others.
“Learning from the HIV pandemic is very important, so engaging with the communities that were affected early on to find solutions will be our best weapon against the spread of this virus,” he said.
Tam said learning more about the disease, including how to recognize its symptoms, is critical to fighting its spread.
“We have to stay vigilant,” he said. “Frontline health care professionals, if they think they’re seeing patients with rashes or other potential risk factors, get them tested.
“That’s the most important thing: staying vigilant on the front lines.”
A global emergency
Last week, the head of the World Health Organization said the smallpox outbreak is an “extraordinary” situation that qualifies as a global emergency.
“We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission about which we understand too little and that meets the criteria of international health regulations,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
A global emergency is the WHO’s highest alert level, but the designation does not necessarily mean that a disease is particularly communicable or lethal.
A colored transmission electron micrograph image of monkeypox particles (teal) inside an infected cell (brown) captured at the National Allergy Institute’s Center for Integrated Research and Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland. (National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases)
Tam said there are now 745 cases in Canada: 346 cases in Quebec, 326 in Ontario, 58 in BC, 12 in Alberta, two in Saskatchewan and one in the Yukon. More than 16,000 cases have been reported worldwide; Tam said he believes that number is lower than the actual number of cases.
The number of cases globally has increased by 48% from the previous week, and the disease has now spread to 75 countries, PHAC said.
We have enough vaccines for now, says Tam
In Africa, where the disease has existed for decades, monkeypox primarily spreads to people from infected wild animals such as rodents in limited outbreaks that typically have not crossed borders. In Europe, North America and elsewhere, monkeypox is now spreading among people who have no ties to wildlife and who have not recently traveled to Africa.
PHAC officials said 70,000 doses of the Imvamune vaccine have been sent to provinces and about 27,000 have been administered.
Tam said Canada has a sufficient supply of the vaccine for now. He urged vulnerable groups, such as men who have sex with men, to get vaccinated to slow the spread.