There are no sus­pect­ed mon­key­pox cas­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go at this time ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health. How­ev­er, it is ad­vis­ing peo­ple who dis­play symp­toms of the dis­ease and re­cent­ly trav­elled to a coun­try where it was de­tect­ed or was in con­tact with some­one who re­cent­ly re­turned from such a coun­try to vis­it their near­est health­care provider.

"The main symp­toms of Mon­key­pox are fever, rash, and swollen lymph nodes. The virus is trans­mit­ted to hu­mans through close con­tact with an in­fect­ed per­son or an­i­mal, or with con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed ma­te­r­i­al such as bed­ding. The virus may al­so be trans­mit­ted from one per­son to an­oth­er by close con­tact with le­sions, body flu­ids and res­pi­ra­to­ry droplets," the min­istry said in a re­lease on Fri­day which fol­lowed an emer­gency meet­ing on Fri­day to dis­cuss the small out­break of over 100 cas­es be­ing wit­nessed in parts of Eu­rope and now the Unit­ed States.

In at­ten­dance at the emer­gency meet­ing were Dr Er­i­ca Wheel­er from the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO), Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram, Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Di­vi­sion Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor Dr Av­ery Hinds, Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer of In­sti­tu­tions Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards, and Man­ag­er of the Ex­tend­ed Pro­gramme on Im­mu­ni­sa­tion nurse Grace Sookc­hand.

Re­porter: Rishard Khan