Kalain Ho­sein

In a me­dia re­lease on Wednes­day af­ter­noon, Min­istry of Health (MOH) ad­vised that a sec­ond case of Mon­key­pox (Mpox) virus was con­firmed by lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing ear­li­er to­day. The pa­tient is a young adult male.

While the Min­istry did not in­di­cate if this case was linked to the first case de­tect­ed on Tues­day, a mid­dle-aged male with re­cent trav­el his­to­ry, the rel­e­vant Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health is cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing an epi­demi­ol­o­gy in­ves­ti­ga­tion and has ini­ti­at­ed the lo­cal pub­lic health re­sponse, which in­cludes home iso­la­tion and con­tact trac­ing for the pa­tient.

Since Jan­u­ary 1st, 2022, through Ju­ly 3rd, 2023, the WHO has re­ceived over 88,144 lab­o­ra­to­ry-con­firmed cas­es and 1,084 prob­a­ble cas­es, in­clud­ing 149 deaths across 112 coun­tries. Glob­al­ly, the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca is the most af­fect­ed coun­try, with over 30,000 con­firmed cas­es.

On av­er­age, 95 cas­es are still re­port­ed week­ly across the globe, with the Re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as, where Trinidad and To­ba­go is lo­cat­ed, re­main­ing the most af­fect­ed WHO re­gion. Trinidad and To­ba­go has joined Puer­to Ri­co, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Ja­maica, Cu­ba, Mar­tinique, Aru­ba, the Ba­hamas, Cu­ra­cao, Guyana, Bar­ba­dos, Bermu­da, Guade­loupe, and Saint Mar­tin, where mpox cas­es have been re­port­ed in the Caribbean to the WHO.

Even with this lat­est de­vel­op­ment, the Min­is­ter of Health stressed on Tues­day night, in an in­ter­view with CNC3 News, "Don't pan­ic but be care­ful. Be care­ful in hav­ing close phys­i­cal con­tact, es­pe­cial­ly sex­u­al con­tact. It is trans­mit­ted main­ly by very close, in­ti­mate phys­i­cal con­tact." Deyals­ingh said, "It is not like COVID-19, which you can get just sit­ting on a maxi-taxi next to some­body."

How Does Mpox Spread?

Per­son-to-per­son trans­mis­sion of mpox can oc­cur through di­rect con­tact with in­fec­tious skin or oth­er le­sions, such as in the mouth or on the gen­i­tals, in­clud­ing:

- Face-to-face (talk­ing or breath­ing)

- Skin-to-skin (touch­ing or vagi­nal/anal sex)

- Mouth-to-mouth (kiss­ing)

- Mouth-to-skin (oral sex or kiss­ing the skin)

- Res­pi­ra­to­ry droplets or short-range aerosols from pro­longed close con­tact.