THE Department of Health (DOH) on Friday, August 26, 2022, said it is facing difficulties in establishing the source of infection of the fourth case of monkeypox in the country due to the latter’s hesitancy in providing further information.In a press conference, DOH Officer-in-Charge (OIC) Maria Rosario Vergeire said their ongoing tracing of the source of infection is being hindered by the refusal of the patient to be interviewed again.”One challenge we are facing is in establishing the accurate history of the patient. The patient is now quite hesitant to give us information. The patient is slightly hesitant in talking to us,” said Vergeire.”The patient has already provided us a complete history of his whereabouts, where he went, and what were his activities, since the time that he had the symptoms. The patient is hesitant to provide us additional information,” she added.The health official said the hesitancy stems from recent developments wherein the patient’s images circulated on social media.”Because of all of the media reports that have happened in the past days… his picture posted on social media. This made him quite hesitant in talking to us,” she said.Asked if this would be in violation of the Mandatory Reporting of Notifiable Diseases and Health Events Act, she said it is not.”He is not refusing but we also want to respect his request not to be interviewed for the moment because of what happened these past days,” said the DOH OIC.For the moment, Vergeire said they will closely coordinate with the family of the patient.”We will continue to coordinate with his family so that we can talk to the patient again and be able to establish the true source of infection,” she said.The DOH earlier said it is still in the process of backtracing the case of the fourth monkeypox patient in a bid to establish the actual source of infection.This as the fourth case is unlike the first three cases, with the patient having no documented travel history to or from any country with confirmed cases of monkeypox.Case No. 4Vergeire said the fourth case is still undergoing isolation at a facility, with his lesions already healing.”Recovery tagging and discharge will be based on the assessment of attending physician considering clinical status (including lesion stages) and/or laboratory criteria,” said the DOH.As for the 14 close contacts identified earlier, the DOH said all have remained asymptomatic.Of the 14, there are six who finished quarantine, six still undergoing quarantine and one doing self-monitoring.There is also one close contact, who is assisting the case in the isolation facility, with the former’s quarantine set to start when the case is discharged from isolation.Global case dropVergeire said they are hoping that there will be no more additional monkeypox cases detected in the country.This, she said, was after the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that global monkeypox cases dropped by 21 percent over the last week.”This is welcome news for us because we are seeing that cases are slowing down internationally,” she said.”Here in the Philippines, hopefully, our cases will remain to be four,” added Vergeire.According to the WHO, it has observed a reversal of the month-long trend of rising infections of monkeypox globally. (HDT/SunStar Philippines)