It is in Quebec that there are the most cases of monkeypox and by far. Early in the afternoon, the Quebec Ministry of Health announced that the province now had 71 reported cases.
Providing an update on the situation on Friday in Ottawa, the chief public health officer, Theresa Tam, and her deputy, Howard Njoo, described the situation as “worrying” in Quebec, while specifying that this outbreak does not has nothing to do with a pandemic of the magnitude of COVID-19.
On the one hand, monkeypox is not at all as contagious as COVID and, on the other hand, public health authorities in Quebec are carrying out tight contact tracing.
Nevertheless, the situation is being closely monitored, mainly because we want to avoid a spread that would affect pregnant women or children, who could be more vulnerable.
According to Dr. Njoo, older people who received the smallpox vaccine when it was still being given, before the 1970s, would be better protected than younger people. Smallpox as it was known before the 21st century was declared eradicated in 1979 after major vaccination efforts worldwide.
Elsewhere in Canada, public health is reporting five confirmed cases of monkeypox in Ontario and one in Alberta. Dr. Tam noted that knowledge is not yet advanced enough to model the predicted spread of monkeypox in Canada.
COVID: all indicators down
In addition, Doctors Tam and Njoo provided an update on the COVID situation in the country. Although the number of hospitalizations remains high, all the indicators, whether it be the number of cases, hospitalizations or serious cases are on the decline, as are the indices collected by the analysis of wastewater.
Experts are also looking more deeply into cases of long COVID, that is, people in whom certain symptoms still persist, three months after an initial infection. The most common symptoms are fatigue, cognitive problems, trouble sleeping and shortness of breath.
These prolonged symptoms affect both children and adults equally and it is estimated that between 30% and 40% of people who contracted the disease, but did not need to be hospitalized, have symptoms of prolonged COVID. The condition also seems to affect women more than men.
These findings affect long COVID cases from infections that precede the appearance of the Omicron variant.