Health
Toronto dancer tells of excruciating pain, isolation and stigma of monkeypox infection – Global News
Peter Kelly was still bouncing back from COVID-19 when a case of monkeypox gave him the “worst pain” of his life.
The 28-year-old Toronto resident had only just returned to work as a dancer and physical trainer in late May when he developed a fever.
“I was so delirious,” he said in an interview, as he described the agonizing symptoms associated with the disease and the sense of isolation during about three weeks of home quarantine.
“I must have been really sick and I didn’t even know. For two days I didn’t really move, I would just go to the washroom and go back to bed and sleep some more. It was super high fever and night chills. I was wearing a winter jacket in bed, I was so cold.”
Kelly’s fever broke on the third day and soon after he said he noticed red rash. He said he immediately began to search the web for what the rash might be.
“You start Googling this and that’s the worst thing you could ever do.”
Doctors suspected it was herpes, which Kelly said “freaked” him out.
“That started to really affect my mental health because you can’t cure it. You can just control that over the years.”
But he looked at the pictures more closely, and wondered if it was monkeypox.
He went to the local hospital and told the authorities: “I need a monkeypox test, please.” The result came back positive.
Kelly said he was one of the first people in Ontario to be infected with that virus and is now part of a study among former patients being conducted at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
The Public Health Agency of Canada has recorded more than 600 cases of monkeypox, or MPXV as it is known in the scientific community, since the first report in early June. Quebec has the highest number of cases at over 300, followed by 230 in Ontario, 40 in British Columbia and about a dozen in Alberta. The disease has mostly been reported among men who have sex with men.
There are over 6,000 lab-confirmed cases across the globe and three people have died from the disease, showed data from the World Health Organization. Local transmission of monkeypox has been recorded with no epidemiological links to countries that have previously reported monkeypox, such as western or central parts of Africa, it said.
Kelly said his rash and lesions were some of the most painful things he has had to endure and the simple act of rolling over was “excruciating.”
It was when the rash started to turn into boils that the pain became unimaginable, he recalled.
“That is when the pain was throbbing. And I mean throbbing,” he said. “It felt like electric shocks. I didn’t sleep for probably like 30 hours or something. It was just so painful. I had a washcloth between my teeth trying to clamp on it, just to rock myself through the pain. But I couldn’t handle it. It was insane.”
One lesion on his left foot began to pool blood because he had to put his weight on it to walk, he said.
Adding to the physical pain was the mental stress, he said.
Apart from visits to hospitals and clinics, Kelly remained isolated in his tiny Toronto apartment.
“I felt helpless because I’m being told to isolate for God only knows how long and I’m in excruciating pain,” he said.
During those three weeks, Kelly said he lost all his dancing and training work but his bills kept piling up.
He spent $50 a week at the coin-operated laundry in his building, and $120 on bandages and sterile supplies.
Friends dropped off food and groceries and coins for the laundry. Toronto Public Health gave him a grocery store gift card, although he didn’t know how to use it while in isolation.
As one of the first diagnosed cases of monkeypox in Toronto, Kelly said he felt “he was a bit of a guinea pig.”
He was told to “triple bag” all his garbage and label it as hazardous waste, to be picked up by a team, he said.
Kelly said he “for sure” contracted the virus at a bathhouse. “I got it because I like to have sex,” he said.
While he got a lot of support, he also received some hateful messages on social media.
“’You got the gay pox’, or ‘you’re disgusting’, or ‘you deserve to get it,”’ he said recalling some of the messages.
Kelly said that there was a stigma to contracting monkeypox, and he initially worried how people would react to his infection. But be decided to be open about it.
“I’m going to tell someone about this because there are more people, it’s not just me. They’re in the same situation at home isolating and there’s no one talking about it. There’s no resources or anything.”
He said he would like the government and public health agencies to devote more resources to fighting the spread of monkeypox.
His isolation period ended on June 21 and Kelly said he found a whole new appreciation for the outdoors.
“I’m getting on with my life.”
© 2022 The Canadian Press
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Grande Prairie RCMP issued a warning Friday after it was revealed fentanyl linked to a deadly overdose was mixed with a chemical that doesn’t respond to naloxone treatment.
The drugs were initially seized on Feb. 28 after a fatal overdose, and this week, Health Canada reported back to Mounties that the fentanyl had been mixed with Bromazolam, which is a benzodiazepine.
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Mounties say this is the first recorded instance of Bromazolam in Alberta. The drug has previously been linked to nine fatal overdoses in New Brunswick in 2022.
The pills seized in Alberta were oval-shaped and stamped with “20” and “SS,” though Mounties say it can come in other forms.
Naloxone treatment, given in many cases of opioid toxicity, is not effective in reversing the effects of Bromazalam, Mounties said, and therefore, any fentanyl mixed with the benzodiazepine “would see a reduced effectiveness of naloxone, requiring the use of additional doses and may still result in a fatality.”
From January to November of last year, there were 1,706 opioid-related deaths in Alberta, and 57 linked to benzodiazepine, up from 1,375 and 43, respectively, in 2022.
Mounties say officers responded to about 1,100 opioid-related calls for service, last year with a third of those proving fatal. RCMP officers also used naloxone 67 times while in the field, a jump of nearly a third over the previous year.
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Health
CFIA continues surveillance for HPAI in cattle, while sticking with original name for disease – RealAgriculture
The Canada Food Inspection Agency will continue to refer to highly pathogenic avian influenza in cattle as HPAI in cattle, and not refer to it as bovine influenza A virus (BIAV), as suggested by the American Association of Bovine Practitioners earlier this month.
Dr. Martin Appelt, senior director for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, in the interview below, says at this time Canada will stick with “HPAI in cattle” when referencing the disease that’s been confirmed in dairy cattle in multiple states in the U.S.
The CFIA’s naming policy is consistent with the agency’s U.S. counterparts’, as the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has also said it will continue referring to it as HPAI or H5N1.
Appelt explains how the CFIA is learning from the U.S. experience to-date, and how it is working with veterinarians across Canada to stay vigilant for signs of the disease in dairy and beef cattle.
As of April 19, there has not been a confirmed case of HPAI in cattle in Canada. Appelt says it’s too soon to say if an eventual positive case will significantly restrict animal movement, as is the case with positive poultry cases.
This is a major concern for the cattle industry, as beef cattle especially move north and south across the U.S. border by the thousands. Appelt says that CFIA will address an infection in each species differently in conjunction with how the disease is spread and the threat to neighbouring farms or livestock.
Currently, provincial dairy organizations have advised producers to postpone any non-essential tours of dairy barns, as a precaution, in addition to other biosecurity measures to reduce the risk of cattle contracting HPAI.
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Health
Toronto reports 2 more measles cases. Use our tool to check the spread in Canada – Toronto Star
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Canada has seen a concerning rise in measles cases in the first months of 2024.
By the third week of March, the country had already recorded more than three times the number of cases as all of last year. Canada had just 12 cases of measles in 2023, up from three in 2022.
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