Thousands of foreigners, including Americans, are flocking to Montreal to get the monkeypox vaccine, which is in short supply in the US.
Canada’s second-largest city, about 70km north of the US border, has made the vaccine available to all those who consider themselves at risk.
Robb Stilson, an art director from Denver, Colorado, took advantage of the opportunity during a visit to Montreal last week.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“It’s very difficult in the states to get vaccinated,” Stilson said, as he lined up to get a shot at a pop-up vaccination center together with his husband and two daughters. “I’ve friends who have waited eight or nine hours to get in.”
Because contact tracing is difficult, authorities in Montreal are offering the vaccine to all who are at risk to stem the spread of the virus.
“As tourists, they may participate in activities that may expose them and so in a way, we’re combatting the pandemic by letting them become vaccinated here so that they don’t transmit the infection either here or when they go back home,” McGill University Health Center infectious disease specialist Donald Vinh said.
Since the vaccination campaign was launched in mid-May. Montreal has inoculated 18,500 people, 13 percent of them foreigners.
The goal is to administer 25,000 doses and vaccinate 75-80 percent of the population considered to be at-risk, in particular men who have sex with men or with multiple partners.
“I hope the strategy used by the public health agency of Montreal is a beacon for other public health agencies to use as a vaccination strategy,” Vinh said.
In British Columbia, health authorities last week said they would no longer offer the vaccine to foreigners, citing limited supplies and that it was becoming more available in the US.
Faced with a lack of available doses, US health authorities on Tuesday authorized a new injection procedure which would make it possible to inoculate five times the number of people with the same amount of the drug.
As of Thursday, Canada has registered 1,059 confirmed cases of monkeypox, but authorities said signs of infections are beginning to slow.
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