An­na-Lisa Paul

Hours af­ter the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) ac­ti­vat­ed its high­est alert lev­el for the grow­ing Mon­key­pox out­break, de­clar­ing the virus a Pub­lic Health Emer­gency of In­ter­na­tion­al Con­cern (PHE­IC) Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh as­sured this coun­try is ready to move quick­ly to ad­dress any cas­es that are de­tect­ed lo­cal­ly.

In an in­ter­view on Sat­ur­day, he said the Min­istry of Health (MoH) had al­ready be­gun sen­si­tis­ing key groups.

Al­though Eu­rope is cur­rent­ly the epi­cen­tre of the out­break, the WHO said right now—men who have sex with men, es­pe­cial­ly those with mul­ti­ple part­ners, are the com­mu­ni­ty at high­est risk.

Deyals­ingh ad­vised that out­reach ef­forts were be­ing done via the HIV/AIDS Co­or­di­nat­ing Unit; the Sex­u­al­ly Trans­mit­ted Dis­eases Clin­ics; and oth­er non-gov­ern­men­tal net­works to which the vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions are af­fil­i­at­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the nine rec­om­men­da­tions out­lined by the WHO—T&T is in Group One which in­cludes coun­tries that have no his­to­ry of Mon­key­pox, or have not record­ed a case of Mon­key­pox for over 21 days. De­spite this, the min­is­ter urged the pop­u­la­tion not to be­come com­pla­cent.

“What it means for T&T, is that we should be on a height­ened state of vig­i­lance,” he ad­vised.

More than 16,000 cas­es have been re­port­ed in 70 coun­tries, with five deaths record­ed in Africa so far.

Deyals­ingh said: “We ask the pop­u­la­tion to be ex­treme­ly vig­i­lant, es­pe­cial­ly with in­di­vid­u­als who are in close skin-to-skin con­tact with any­one who has re­cent­ly come in from any of those 70 coun­tries.”

In­di­cat­ing the Min­istry of Health had fo­cused its ef­forts on the lo­cal ho­mo­sex­u­al pop­u­la­tion in terms of out­reach and aware­ness, he said the Trinidad Pub­lic Health Lab could fa­cil­i­tate test­ing once the need arose.

He said the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal had been des­ig­nat­ed as the iso­la­tion and treat­ment fa­cil­i­ty.

“In case we get any pos­i­tive cas­es or even a sus­pect case un­til we have con­fir­ma­tion,” Deyals­ingh said of­fi­cials in To­ba­go had al­so been ad­vised to set up a sim­i­lar fa­cil­i­ty for the is­land.

Re­gard­ing the virus’s mor­tal­i­ty rate which re­mains con­fined to the African con­ti­nent for now, he said: “While that may be com­fort­ing to us, we just have as a small coun­try, to make sure we do every­thing to pro­tect our­selves, to mit­i­gate against the pos­si­ble en­try of the virus.”

He said, “We can’t keep it out en­tire­ly. Our bor­ders are open but the mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies are in place and we ask the en­tire pop­u­la­tion to be vig­i­lant, and be aware that the main mode of trans­mis­sion as it has been, is close skin-to-skin con­tact.”

Deyals­ingh warned that the virus can al­so be spread via shared bed­ding and cloth­ing, es­pe­cial­ly if skin le­sions are open.

“It is a very in­ti­mate form of trans­mis­sion and we have been ad­vis­ing per­sons about,” he added.

Pressed to say if vac­cines would be used as part of the ef­fort to stem the spread, he said T&T was pur­su­ing ac­qui­si­tion of vac­cines via PA­HO/WHO; CARPHA; and via bi-lat­er­al talks.

He said: “Large coun­tries were now hoard­ing Mon­key­pox vac­cines in the same way they hoard­ed COVID-19 vac­cines,”

Deyals­ingh re­peat­ed the call “for eq­ui­ty in the man­age­ment and is­su­ing of mon­key pox vac­cines.”