China’s top health official advised people to avoid physical contact with foreigners to prevent possible exposure to monkeypox after the first known case of the virus was reported in mainland China on Friday, Reuters reported.

“To prevent possible exposure to monkeypox and as part of our healthy lifestyle, we recommend 1) not having direct skin-to-skin contact with foreigners,” said Wu Junyu, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. on his official Weibo page.

Wu also asked people to avoid skin-to-skin contact with people who have been abroad in the past three weeks, as well as with all “foreigners”.

“It is necessary and very important to strengthen the surveillance and prevention of the monkeypox epidemic at the public level,” he wrote.

His post was widely shared on social media over the weekend, but the comments section under his original post was disabled on Sunday.

Commenting on social media, some questioned why foreigners in China, many of whom are permanent residents and have not left recently due to COVID-19 restrictions, are considered more dangerous than locals.

Wu did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

The city of Chongqing on Friday confirmed a case of monkeypox in a person who arrived from abroad, marking the first known case of monkeypox in mainland China amid the recent global outbreak.

The risk of transmission is low because the person was quarantined after arriving in Chongqing, the municipal health commission said in a statement. All close contacts are isolated and placed under medical observation.