Duterte ready to seize private buildings to quarantine nCoV patients
![Duterte ready to seize private buildings to quarantine nCoV patients](https://media.philstar.com/photos/2020/02/04/duterte-ncov-meeting-officials_2020-02-04_21-33-02.jpg)
MANILA, Philippines — The government may expropriate private facilities and convert them to quarantine centers or hospitals if the Philippines is hit by a novel coronavirus outbreak, President Rodrigo Duterte said.
While he believes that nCoV will eventually die a "natural death," Duterte has instructed the Health department to prepare rooms or spaces for patients who exhibited symptoms of the disease.
"I will expropriate. I will get your building whether you like it or not, whether it is on times of emergency... It is confiscatory in nature," the president told reporters in Malacañang Monday night.
"You confiscate, then you make it a hospital bringing in the equipment inside the building where the egress and ingress is controlled," he added.
Duterte said the government may use the drug rehabilitation facility at Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija donated by a Chinese philanthropist to accommodate patients who have to be quarantined or treated.
"But that building I think the first building is vacant, not used. Problem is I think the governor is against (the conversion of the building to a hospital). It's in Fort Magsaysay. That building is inside a national government reservation. It's spacious," Duterte said.
"I will place a lot of people there if the contagion actually... It’s epidemic if it is just regional or local or national. It is pandemic if it is worldwide," he added.
Previous reports said Nueva Ecija Gov. Aurelio Umali is against the conversion of the Mega Drug Rehabilitation Center in Fort Magsaysay into a quarantine center. The drug rehabilitation center was launched in 2016 as part of the Duterte administration's campaign against illegal drugs.
Duterte said agencies have not yet finalized the sites of the quarantine facilities, noting that the Philippines only has two confirmed cases of nCoV.
"It is not yet needed but I said we will prepare," he said.
Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles said the drug rehabilitation center in Fort Magsaysay would "most probably" be used as a quarantine facility.
"The huge facility can accommodate a lot if need be. In the meantime, all our different government hospitals have their own quarantine facilities. Our government hospitals are ready to implement the quarantine protocols," Nograles said in a media forum Tuesday in Quezon City.
Duterte said the government is also buying face masks to protect the public from the virus.
"We are procuring and we have supplies coming in. The supply is depleted because there is an emergency and there's a need for it. So everybody is buying. That's the reason why there is a scarce supply in the market. Without the virus, the masks are not being sold by the thousands. The virus raised the prices," he said.
Nograles said Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez has spoken with local manufacturers and importers of the mask to augment the supply of the medical tool.
"I think the scarcity comes with the problem of hoarding... it is creating some sort of panic among our people. There is the tendency for our countrymen... to purchase more than what is required," Nograles said.
"We are asking our countrymen not to hoard face masks," he added.
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
- Latest
- Trending