Tourists were among those who lined up to get monkeypox Vaccines on a Saturday in Montreal, as World Health Organization The virus was declared a global health emergency.
Brian Massey was one of several New Yorkers waiting to be shot at an outdoor walk-in clinic in the city’s Gay Village.
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Brian Massey of New York is vaccinated against monkeypox at an outdoor walk-in clinic in Montreal on Saturday, July 23, 2022. Tourists are among those vaccinated for monkeypox in Montreal, as the World Health Organization has declared the virus A. Global health emergency.
Canadian Press/Graham Hughes
Massey, who was already on vacation in Montreal, said he was prompted to get the vaccine in Canada after a failed attempt to book an appointment back home.
“It’s like concert tickets,” he said of the process in New York.
Read more: Monkeypox cases increase in Canada – has the risk level changed in the country?
He said that when appointments opened at 6 p.m. he would go online, only to have to constantly refresh a stalled app and eventually be told that there were no appointments available.
Later, at a drag show, he heard an announcement that vaccines were available to tourists in Montreal.
“They mentioned that it was here and it’s the best thing ever because the community is reaching out, and I can get through it without having to deal with America,” he said.
Another New York vacation couple told a similar story about trying to book a vaccine appointment back home.
“I was taken out of the system maybe five or six times and eventually there were no more appointments, and didn’t say when more appointments would be released,” Brad, 36, said. ,
“We were able to come here and get the walk-in vaccine and it’s amazing, an incredible service,” he said.
Read more: Experts say monkeypox may have spread to the US as a new STD
Montreal is offering vaccinations for all men who have sex with men, as well as those who have been exposed to monkeypox.
On Saturday, about a dozen health workers sat under pink and blue tents on Stay-Catherine Street informing people who had stopped to inquire about the vaccine.
The men were asked for their health card or, in the case of tourists, a piece of ID, and waited their turn sitting under the tent or on a nearby wall.
Michael Liebman, an infectious disease expert at McGill University, said opening up the vaccine to tourists is the “right sense” and the right thing to do to stop the spread of the disease.
“The big problem is not local spread, but people carrying the disease from place to place,” he said in a phone interview.
The World Health Organization announced on Saturday that monkeypox now qualifies as a global emergency, noting that it has spread to more than 70 countries.
A global emergency is the organization’s highest level of alert, but the designation does not mean that a disease is particularly contagious or fatal. Similar announcements were made for Zika virus in Latin America in 2016 and ongoing efforts to eradicate polio in addition to the COVID-19 pandemic in West Africa and the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus decided to call monkeypox a global emergency despite a lack of consensus among experts on the UN health agency’s emergency committee, saying they acted as a “tiebreaker”. It was the first time the head of a UN health agency had made a unilateral decision without the recommendation of an expert.
“We have an outbreak that has spread rapidly around the world through new modes of transmission that we understand very little about,” he said. “I know it’s not an easy or straightforward process and there are different ideas.”
Although monkeypox has been established in parts of Central and West Africa for decades, it was not known to cause large outbreaks beyond the continent or spread widely among people until May, when officials had detected dozens of epidemics in Europe, North America and elsewhere.
Canada had 681 confirmed cases of monkeypox in five provinces as of Saturday, including 331 in According to the Public Health Agency of Quebec, Canada. The case number has doubled since July 1, the agency said, noting that the first diagnosis involving a woman and the first infection in the province of Saskatchewan during the same time period have also been recorded.
“Since the start of the outbreak, the Government of Canada’s top priority has been to protect the health of all Canadians,” said a statement issued after the WHO announcement. “The government accepts the determination of the WHO and will continue its work with the provinces and territories as it has since the beginning of the monkeypox outbreak.”
The Quebec government said in an email on Friday that monkeypox is “relatively contained” in the province, despite numbers continuing to creep upward.
The province said it did not keep numbers of how many of the 13,000 vaccines administered so far went to tourists from outside the province.
“In general, we recommend that people in their province or region of origin get vaccinated before traveling to Quebec or Montreal to ensure the vaccine is effective,” the health department wrote.
Liebman said the WHO’s declaration of a global emergency is a “call to action” that countries need to contain.
He says that for now, the disease is mainly spreading to a small segment of the population – men who report close contact with men – which makes it controllable unless health officials quickly work from.
But he noted that anyone can get monkeypox, which is spread through respiratory droplets, through prolonged close contact, skin sores or direct contact with bodily fluids, or contaminated clothing or bedding.
This means that if it is not brought under control, it will “inevitably” spread to other groups, including households, he said.
Most of the men living in Montreal said they were not overly concerned about getting monkeypox or the WHO declaration.
“For me it’s more about prevention, but you never know,” said Mario Thouin, a resident of Drummondville, Ky.
Twenty-three-year-old Isaiah Hagerman, on the other hand, said he was already considering getting vaccinated, but the WHO announcement gave him the push he needed.
“If someone had given me a pamphlet maybe a week ago, I probably would have gone through it,” he said.
For his part, Mackie said he feels uplifted by the warm welcome in Montreal as well as the community effort to protect people.
“(Monkeypox) doesn’t scare me because of this,” she said, pointing to the pink and blue tents. “New York is stressful.”
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