CAS­TRIES, St Lu­cia – Health au­thor­i­ties here have in­creased sur­veil­lance for Mon­key­pox af­ter be­ing alert­ed to the fact that a crew mem­ber on a flight to the is­land has since test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus. How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cials, the in­di­vid­ual did not dis­em­bark from the air­craft when it ar­rived. 

 A state­ment is­sued on Mon­day by the Min­istry of Health, Well­ness and El­der­ly Af­fairs dis­closed that the Epi­demi­ol­o­gy De­part­ment was alert­ed to the sit­u­a­tion by the US Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC).  

 “As ob­tained with in­fec­tious dis­eases, the re­quired con­tact trac­ing process is cur­rent­ly be­ing un­der­tak­en by the con­tact trac­ing team with­in the Min­istry of Health. All iden­ti­fied con­tacts of the case shall be con­tact­ed by the Min­istry of Health and placed in quar­an­tine and mon­i­tored over a 21-day pe­ri­od,” it said. 

 The Min­istry added that with the sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in the num­ber of cas­es of Mon­key­pox con­firmed glob­al­ly in re­cent weeks, St. Lu­cia has strength­ened the ca­pac­i­ty to man­age in­di­vid­u­als who are ei­ther sus­pect or con­firmed cas­es.  

 It said the pro­to­cols that are in place for COVID-19 have been mod­i­fied to al­low for the man­age­ment of Mon­key­pox.  

 “Any per­son ex­posed to Mon­key­pox shall be placed in quar­an­tine and mon­i­tored by the Home Mon­i­tor­ing Team of clin­i­cians. The ca­pac­i­ty for test­ing for the Mon­key­pox virus ex­ists with­in the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) and as such, sam­ples will be tak­en from any in­di­vid­ual who ex­hibits symp­toms while in quar­an­tine/iso­la­tion and shall be sent di­rect­ly to CARPHA for test­ing,” the Health Min­istry said. 

 It added that Vic­to­ria Hos­pi­tal has as­signed a ded­i­cat­ed ward ex­clu­sive­ly for the care and man­age­ment of any­one who re­ceives a pos­i­tive test re­sult. 

The man­age­ment of Mon­key­pox is done by treat­ing symp­toms and there is the ca­pac­i­ty in-coun­try to ef­fec­tive­ly un­der­take this, the Min­istry added 

. Ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s lat­est re­port, there are over 2,100 con­firmed cas­es glob­al­ly, and at least one per­son has died. (CMC)