BACOLOD CITY – Mayor Alfredo Abelardo “Albee” Benitez has ordered the monitoring of visitors here for monkeypox following the first confirmed case in the country last month.

Benitez said the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (CDRRMO) and the Provincial DRRMO of Negros Occidental are now organizing to have common operations in relation to this matter.

“I think they (CDRRMO) should also be in conjuction with the provincial DRRMO,” the mayor, who was formerly a consultant of the province in Covid-19 response, said.

Aside from this, Benitez noted that they should also start educating the public on how to protect themselves against monkeypox.

Benitez said monkeypox is not the same as Covid-19. Thus, we give more ways of protecting ourselves, he added.

The Department of Health (DOH) said the first case of monkeypox in the country is a 31-year-old Filipino who arrived from abroad last July 19 and had prior travel to countries with documented monkeypox cases.

The case was tested and confirmed positive for monkeypox via Reverse Transcriptase-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) at the DOH-Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) in Muntinlupa City last July 28. The case has been discharged well and is undergoing strict isolation and monitoring at home.

Monkeypox symptoms are mild and the disease is rarely fatal. It spreads mostly by intimate sexual contact with those who have rashes or open lesions. It is not like Covid-19 that spreads mostly through the air.

Last August 5, City Health Officer Dr. Carmela Gensoli and DRRM head Dr. Ana Maria Laarni Pornan shared with the Bacolod Public Information Office the guidance received from the main office of the DOH assuring the public that the agency has already completed its case investigation and identification of close contacts of the first identified case of monkeypox in the country.

Gensoli and Pornan informed the public that, in any event of an outbreak, the same safety protocols are observed in preventing monkeypox cases.