Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said Cabinet made the decision as a precautionary measure to deal with the disease that is now listed as a dangerous infectious disease in Trinidad and Tobago. He was speaking at the Ministry of Health press conference on Wednesday.
The hospital that falls under the North Central Regional Health Authority (NCRHA) was also one of the first hospitals to be named as a Covid-19 facility at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.
Deyalsingh said, “The Cabinet note also spoke to an approval of an Order by the Quarantine Authority to allow special measures to be taken in light of the emergency of the spread of monkeypox virus under Section 6 (1) of the Quarantine Act Chapter 28:05.”
He explained that the Cabinet decision allows government to treat any person with a foreign travel history coming and if there was a suspected or confirmed case of monkeypox, that person can be quarantined under the direction of the Chief Medical Officer.
He reminded the population of Cabinet’s first decision which was to declare monkeypox as a dangerous infectious disease. This was declared on June 23.
Under the public health regulations, another legal measure, persons with no link to travel can be quarantined.
Deyalsingh said, “We urge people to pay attention to the global issues surrounding monkeypox.”
The minister added, “Please note that there was one case on a flight into a CARICOM country but nobody disembarked so, so far there is no threat to Trinidad and Tobago from that particular incident.”
Monkeypox is a viral zoonosis -a virus transmitted to humans from animals or human to human with symptoms very similar but usually clinically less severe than those seen in smallpox patients.
The main symptoms of monkeypox are fever, rash, and swollen lymph nodes.
There are nine other dangerous infectious diseases which Deyalsingh listed out.
These include:
- Yellow fever;
- Smallpox;
- Plague;
- Cholera;
- Relapsing fever;
- Typhoid fever;
- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS);
- Ebola; and
- Novel Coronavirus 2019 (NCoV).
Monkeypox is the tenth to be added to the list.
