Philippine health agency quashes mpox lockdown rumours
"Don't dismiss this, please share! [The government] is trying to determine if the entire country should be placed on lockdown because of the danger of mpox," reads part of the Tagalog-language caption of a graphic shared on Facebook on May 31, 2025.
It bears the logos of the Philippines' Department of Health and the World Health Organization, says the lockdown will start "June 10, 2025" and adds the use of face masks will be mandatory.
The Facebook post also includes links to products sold on popular e-commerce sites Shopee and Lazada.
Similar posts were shared elsewhere on Facebook, as were similar graphics about a June 6 lockdown purportedly shared by Philippine broadcaster ABS-CBN.
"Oh no, here we go again, this is scary," read a comment on one of the posts.
Another said: "And children are about to go back to school next month at the opening of the school year!"
Multiple towns in the central and southern Philippines in May reported cases of mpox, a disease caused by a virus from the same family as smallpox that manifests itself in a high fever and skin lesions (archived here, here and here).
But the archipelago's health department says there is no need to restrict the public's movement.
According to the agency, the cases reported in May were caused by the mild Clade 2 variant -- not the highly transmissible Clade 1b strain of the virus that has killed hundreds of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo and was also detected in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Sweden (archived here and here).
The Department of Health said in a May 31 statement that posts claiming a lockdown was imminent were "fake", and there was no need to restrict movement because mpox is not airborne (archived link).
"Lockdown does not work for mpox. Why? Because it is [transmitted via] skin-to-skin contact, so there could be more skin-to-skin contact if there is a lockdown," health chief Ted Herbosa said in a press briefing on May 31 (archived link).
Separately, the heath department and the Philippine Society for Microbiology and Infectious Diseases said mask mandates imposed by several localities in response to mpox cases were unnecessary and would not prevent the spread of the virus (archived here. here, here and here).
There has also been no surge in the number of mpox cases in the country. According to information released by the health department, more cases were recorded in April than in May (archived link).
The Philippines has not recorded any cases from Clade 1b.
The lockdown graphic purportedly shared by ABS-CBN was also dismissed by the health agency as "fake" on May 31 (archived link).
The graphic uses the same background of a genuine graphic shared by the broadcaster on its official Facebook page on May 28, 2020, at the height of the Covid pandemic (archived link).
The original graphic was about Metro Manila being placed under "General Community Quarantine".
AFP has debunked other false claims about mpox here.
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