KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram says any­one the Min­istry of Health con­firms with the Mon­key­pox virus will have to quar­an­tine for 21 days.

Speak­ing at the Min­istry of Health’s COVID-19 me­dia con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, Paras­ram said based on the known char­ac­ter­is­tics, there is an in­cu­ba­tion pe­ri­od of five to 21 days. There­fore, the rec­om­mend­ed quar­an­tine pe­ri­od is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 21 days.

Paras­ram said the min­istry’s pro­to­col for close con­tact of a con­firmed Mon­key­pox case is self-iso­la­tion at home, a prac­tice used world­wide.

The min­istry will iso­late any cas­es picked up at a port of en­try at its fa­cil­i­ties, to pre­vent them from spread­ing the dis­ease to the pop­u­la­tion.

How­ev­er, the Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cers of Health have dis­cre­tion in de­ter­min­ing the iso­la­tion re­quire­ments.

As for the treat­ment of Mon­key­pox, Paras­ram said doc­tors will tend to the var­i­ous symp­toms pa­tients ex­hib­it.

How­ev­er, he said the min­istry was con­tin­u­ing bi­lat­er­al talks to ac­quire an an­tivi­ral drug that is be­com­ing avail­able.

“In terms of the treat­ment, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, it is symp­to­matic re­lief, so we use med­ica­tion to con­trol the fever. For ex­am­ple, mak­ing sure per­sons are well hy­drat­ed. If you reach the stage of en­cephali­tis, of course, sup­port­ive care in hos­pi­tal is re­quired, for which we have the ca­pac­i­ty at Cau­ra, which is the des­ig­nat­ed fa­cil­i­ty at this point,” Paras­ram said.

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said the min­istry had al­ready des­ig­nat­ed the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal to treat Mon­key­pox pa­tients.

Deyals­ingh said there will be no mix­ing of COVID-19 and Mon­key­pox pa­tients at any fa­cil­i­ty.

He said he had spo­ken to To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Sec­re­tary of the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion Dr Faith B. Yis­rael to ded­i­cate a fa­cil­i­ty suit­able to quar­an­tine Mon­key­pox pa­tients if health of­fi­cials de­tect a case on the is­land.

Deyals­ingh said there was no con­sid­er­a­tion of trav­el re­stric­tions cur­rent­ly.

The min­istry con­vened a meet­ing with the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency and the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion on May 30 to dis­cuss T&T’s re­sponse to the glob­al spread of Mon­key­pox.

Deyals­ingh said the min­istry saw it as a threat the coun­try need­ed to pre­pare for and did not want to wait un­til find­ing a sus­pect­ed or con­firmed case be­fore launch­ing a re­sponse.

The min­istry start­ed prepa­ra­tion on May 20 by seek­ing Cab­i­net ap­proval to have Mon­key­pox list­ed as a dan­ger­ous in­fec­tious dis­ease, which al­lows the Gov­ern­ment to use the Quar­an­tine Act and Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tion to im­ple­ment mea­sures to pro­tect the pub­lic.

Deyals­ingh said the min­istry si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly start­ed build­ing ca­pac­i­ty for test­ing and train­ing on epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance and rais­ing aware­ness.

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) de­clared Mon­key­pox a glob­al health emer­gency on Ju­ly 23, rec­om­mend­ing that coun­tries strength­en a co­or­di­nat­ed in­ter­na­tion­al re­sponse to slow trans­mis­sion and pro­tect vul­ner­a­ble groups.

Deyals­ingh said based on WHO rec­om­men­da­tions, coun­tries fell in­to var­i­ous groups. T&T falls in­to Group 1: coun­tries with no his­to­ry of Mon­key­pox in the hu­man pop­u­la­tion or which did not de­tect a case for over 21 days.

He said Group 1 mem­bers have nine ac­tion items from to im­ple­ment.

He said the min­istry wise­ly im­ple­ment­ed all nine ac­tion items, es­tab­lish­ing health and mul­ti-sec­toral mech­a­nisms, no stig­ma­ti­sa­tion and dis­crim­i­na­tion poli­cies, and in­ten­si­fied epi­demi­o­log­i­cal dis­ease sur­veil­lance and de­tec­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

Test­ing is avail­able at CARPHA and Trinidad Pub­lic Health Lab­o­ra­to­ry.

“We are as in a good place as any based on WHO’s Group 1 rec­om­men­da­tions. Then you move on to Group 2. We are not in Group 2 as yet,” he not­ed.

Group 2 in­cludes states or par­ties with re­cent­ly im­port­ed cas­es of Mon­key­pox in the hu­man pop­u­la­tion or oth­er­wise ex­pe­ri­enc­ing hu­man-hu­man trans­mis­sion of Mon­key­pox virus, in­clud­ing in key pop­u­la­tion groups and com­mu­ni­ties at high risk of ex­po­sure..