Ja­maica con­firmed its first case of mon­key­pox on Wednes­day. Health Min­is­ter Dr Chris Tufton said the case was a male trav­eller from the Unit­ed King­dom. 

Just over a week ago a crew mem­ber on a flight to St Lu­cia test­ed pos­i­tive but of­fi­cials said they nev­er dis­em­barked. 

There are no con­firmed cas­es in T&T at this time, how­ev­er, with the dis­ease now so close to home, many now ques­tion what is T&T do­ing to pre­vent it from reach­ing its shores?

The fol­low­ing is a brief sum­ma­ry of the steps tak­en to date to pre­pare for the dis­ease.

The coun­try's re­sponse to the glob­al out­break, which now has over 6,000 con­firmed cas­es be­gan on May 20 when the Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh called an emer­gency meet­ing with the min­istry's tech­ni­cal team and with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO).

He al­so met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA).

Com­ing out of that meet­ing, were dif­fer­ent strate­gies to de­tect and treat cas­es that may en­ter the coun­try. The prepara­to­ry steps are: alert­ing and ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic about the dis­ease, re­vamp­ing screen­ing pro­to­cols at ports of en­try and train­ing port health work­ers. T&T med­ical as­so­ci­a­tion was alert­ed and sub­se­quent­ly trained doc­tors on how to man­age pos­si­ble cas­es, while alert­ing the re­spec­tive re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties.

Gov­ern­ment has be­gun try­ing to pro­cure small­pox vac­cines to use against the dis­ease, search­ing for an­tivi­ral drugs to treat cas­es, build­ing test­ing ca­pac­i­ty and se­quenc­ing ca­pac­i­ty at UWI through CARPHA.

Un­til ca­pac­i­ty is built for lo­cal test­ing for the dis­ease, the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram ex­plained the cur­rent pro­ce­dure is for sam­ples to be sub­mit­ted to the Cen­tres for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) through CARPHA.

On June 23, the gov­ern­ment made a ma­jor step in prepar­ing for the dis­ease by adding it to the list of dan­ger­ous in­fec­tious dis­eases. This will al­low health of­fi­cials to legal­ly quar­an­tine sus­pect­ed cas­es or iso­late con­firmed cas­es. It will al­so al­low them to en­act pro­to­cols un­der the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance such as the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions to im­ple­ment re­stric­tions to curb the spread. 

Speak­ing in the par­lia­ment, Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh said mon­key­pox trans­mits at a low­er rate than COVID-19 and main­tained there was no in­ten­tion to in­sti­tute trav­el re­stric­tions or close bor­ders at this time.

On June 29, the Min­is­ter of Health re­vealed that the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal was des­ig­nat­ed as the ded­i­cat­ed treat­ment fa­cil­i­ty for sus­pect­ed or con­firmed cas­es of the dis­ease.

From 1 Jan­u­ary to 4 Ju­ly 2022, 6027 lab­o­ra­to­ry-con­firmed cas­es of mon­key­pox and three deaths have been re­port­ed to the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) from 59 coun­tries in five WHO Re­gions (African Re­gion, Re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as, East­ern Mediter­ranean Re­gion, Eu­ro­pean Re­gion, West­ern Pa­cif­ic Re­gion).

The WHO pre­vi­ous­ly con­vened an emer­gency meet­ing of the In­ter­na­tion­al Health Reg­u­la­tions (2005) two weeks ago to de­ter­mine if the cur­rent out­break war­rant­ed es­ca­lat­ing its sta­tus to the high­est threat lev­el of a Pub­lic Health Emer­gency of In­ter­na­tion­al Con­cern (PHE­IC). The com­mit­tee found that it did not con­sti­tute such a threat but not­ed it need­ed to be mon­i­tored. On Ju­ly 18 the com­mit­tee will re­con­vene at the re­quest of the WHO di­rec­tor-gen­er­al to reeval­u­ate the threat.

"I con­tin­ue to be con­cerned about the scale and spread of the virus," WHO head Dr Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus said at a press brief­ing on Wednes­day.

Re­porter: Rishard Khan
                rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt