DOH: Close contacts of 4th monkeypox case not manifesting symptoms

The Department of Health (DOH) on Wednesday said all close contacts of the fourth case of monkeypox in the country have not been manifesting any symptoms of the disease.

At the press briefing, DOH officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said there are still no new cases of monkeypox recorded in the country.

“Wala pa po tayong new detections base po doon sa ginagawa nating sample collections and testing wala pa nagtetest ulit for monkeypox. Doon po sa close contacts ng ating case number four, sila po lahat ay walang sintomas,” she said.

(We still don't have new detections based on the sample collections and testing we are doing, no one has tested again for monkeypox. Among the close contacts of our case number four, they all have no symptoms.)

The Health official said the fourth monkeypox case, a 25-year-old Filipino national with no travel history to any country with confirmed monkeypox cases, is still recovering while the lesions are healing.

Of the 14 close contacts of the patient, Vergeire said four are in quarantine, one is self isolating, one is continuously self monitoring, and one is assisting the patient.

The DOH OIC earlier said that the remaining others have finished quarantine.

Meanwhile, Vergeire said the patient must finish the 21 days isolation period and has to be assessed by the doctors if the patient is completely healed on the last day of isolation.

“Now in terms of the history of the patient, up until now we cannot extract that information kung mayroon siyang nakasalamuha na foreigner o ibang tao na galing sa ibang bansa (if the patient has interacted with a foreigner or person who came from other countries with confirmed monkeypox cases),” Vergeire said.

“We cannot confirm kung tayo ay local case na ba ito at hindi na imported case. We will be informing the public ‘pag may nakuha tayong impormasyon,” she added.

Vergeire highlighted the importance of information dissemination to the public in order to prevent the transmission of the disease.

She said that it also needed an active and robust surveillance system to detect and prevent the transmission of the monkeypox.

“Through an appropriate and adequate surveillance system na makakapagdetect tayo and therefore mapeprevent natin ang pagkalat ng sakit and that has been proven that we have effective surveillance system because we were able to detect four cases already here in the country,” she said.

“Hindi lang surveillance na nagmomonitor tayo kasama po dyan yung laboratory surveillance where in we are capacitating other laboratories para sila rin may capacity to test,” she added.

(It's not just surveillance that we monitor, we also include laboratory surveillance where we are capacitating other laboratories so that they also have the capacity to test.)

The DOH earlier said monkeypox is a virus transmitted to humans through close contact with an infected person or animal, or contaminated materials.

A viral infection resembling smallpox and first detected in humans in 1970, monkeypox is less dangerous and contagious than smallpox, which was eradicated in 1980.

The first symptoms can include a fever, headaches, sharp muscle pains, fatigue, a rash, as well as swollen and painful lymph nodes, according to an Agence France-Presse explainer. — RSJ, GMA News