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BuCor suspends prison visits to curb coronavirus risks

Gaea Katreena Cabico - Philstar.com
BuCor suspends prison visits to curb coronavirus risks
File photo shows the New Bilibid Prison.
The STAR / Edd Gumban, File

MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Corrections on Tuesday said it is suspending visitation privileges in all its prison facilities across the country as the new coronavirus spreads locally.

The visitation privileges for inmates will be suspended in New Bilibid Prison and the bureau’s operating prison and penal farms for one week starting March 11 as part of the "safety protocols in ensuring the welfare of its stakeholders."

The bureau's facilities include:

  • New Bilibid Prison
  • Correctional Institute for Women
  • Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm
  • Davao Prison and Penal Farm
  • San Ramos Prison and Penal Farm
  • Sablayan Prison and Penal Farm
  • Leyte Regional Prison

The move comes after President Rodrigo Duterge declared a state of public emergency throughout the Philippines as the country grapples with another health crisis.

The Philippines has so far recorded 24 cases since late January—half of them diagnosed on Monday.

Out of the 24 confirmed infections, two have recovered, while 21 are still being treated in hospitals. The Philippines reported one death in February—a tourist from Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus first emerged late last year.

Inmates in the Philippines are packed into small, overcrowded spaces, which put them at heightened risk of being infected with the virus.

As of January 2020, there were 49,114 inmates in BuCor-manned prisons across the country.

Prison riots broke out in Italy, the hardest-hit country in Europe, after the government placed the whole peninsula on lockdown to combat the spread of the new coronavirus.

The virus has spread to over 100 countries and territories with more than 110,000 cases of infection. The death toll reached 4,011 on Tuesday.

BUREAU OF CORRECTIONS

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October 1, 2023 - 2:35pm

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

August 18, 2023 - 4:25pm

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

August 11, 2023 - 7:07pm

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

June 24, 2023 - 11:50am

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 

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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

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