Senator Nancy Binay on Monday urged the Department of Health (DOH), which still has no appointed head yet, to heighten its readiness and response capabilities against the threat of monkeypox virus in the country.
With the Philippines' apparent struggle to fill in the gaps in its Covid-19 response, Binay said she hopes that the DOH as well as the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) are now "better prepared" to handle future outbreaks.
Binay, in particular, wants DOH to assign special units in hospitals as well as launch an information campaign about the virus.
Meanwhile, she also wants the DILG to reactivate emergency hotlines and revisit local-level coordination with local government units (LGUs) in terms of surveillance and border control to ensure that transmission of the virus can immediately be contained.
"Naririyan na yung framework na ginamit natin (There still exists our framework) during the height of the Covid pandemic. We can fuse the 3T strategy (tracing, testing, treatment) on Covid with DOH's current 4-door strategy (prevention, detection, isolation, treatment) versus monkeypox," she said.
According to her, both the DOH and the DILG must embark on an educational campaign and impose surveillance and border control measures amid the back-to-back threat of Covid-19 and the monkeypox virus.
"Given our low Covid-19 vaccination rate in highly-vulnerable provinces, plus the slow uptake for booster shots, the monkeypox threat adds up to our Covid pandemic response," she said.
"Dahil na rin sa pandemic fatigue, medyo nag-relax na tayo sa border control. Sadly, napakakulang at mahina pa rin ang ating (Because of pandemic fatigue, we started relaxing our border control. Sadly we still lack and suffer from poor) contact tracing capability at both local and national levels," she added as she hopes that both agencies can scale up their contact tracing.