(Montreal) Quebec’s health ministry says the province now has a total of 98 confirmed cases of monkeypox.
Posted at 7:07 p.m.
That number reported on Thursday is up eight cases from the 90 reported earlier this week.
Monkeypox is a rare disease that comes from the same family of viruses that cause smallpox, which the World Health Organization declared eradicated worldwide in 1980.
Monkeypox does not usually spread easily between people and is transmitted by prolonged close contact via respiratory droplets, direct contact with broken skin or bodily fluids, or through contaminated clothing or bedding.
Quebec began offering a smallpox vaccine to some close contacts of infected people in late May, and the health ministry says it has since vaccinated 1,622 people so far.
Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia have also reported cases of monkeypox, although the vast majority of cases in Canada are in Quebec.