Early screening can quell COVID-19 spread — PGH
MANILA, Philippines — Early screening will help quell the spread of the novel coronavirus, officials of the University of the Philippines said Thursday morning.
Gerardo Legaspi, director of the Philippine General Hospital (PGH), confirmed this in a media briefing that day.
According to Legaspi, house care is an option for confirmed patients of the new pathogen, while only those with severe symptoms would have to be admitted in hospitals.
READ: How the Department of Health processes potential COVID-19 cases
"Dapat po nating isipin na ang pag-alaga sa bahay ay option po," he said, adding that the outpatient department of the PGH saw around 3,000 patients a day.
"Ang problemang ito, hindi po sa hospital ang sagot. Ang sagot ay nasa komunidad din."
(We should consider home care as an option. This problem, the answer is not in the hospital only. The answer is also in the community.)
Speaking of early screening, the PGH director highlighted that anyone who fell under at least two of the three "screening tools" set by the DOH were already considered persons under investigation and should be tested.
According to a bulletin dated February 26 on the department’s Screening Tool, the DOH looks at three main factors before placing an individual under Patient Under Investigation status:
- Signs and symptoms: Does the person exhibit any respiratory symptoms linked to the novel coronavirus? Does the person have a fever over 38.0 degrees?
- Travel history in the past fourteen days to areas with issued travel restrictions
- History of exposure to confirmed cases or other PUIs
"Ang gamot po sa COVID-19 ay [pagiging] healthy individual na hiwalay po sa pasyenteng mas malala, at ang gamot po sa COVID-19 is our natural ability to combat the virus," he said.
"Hindi po kailangan lahat ng simptomas lumabas para maging positive o negative."
(The treatment for COVID-19 is being a healthy individual separated from more severe patients, and the treatment for COVID-19 is our natural ability to combat the virus. You do not need all the symptoms to come out to become positive or negative.)
READ: FDA allows use of test kits developed by UP scientists as virus spreads locally
Dr. Raul Destura, who was credited with inventing the local coronavirus kit, said the university was "in the final phase" before releasing it commercially.
"Ang ating mga Filipino scientists ay ‘di ilalabas itong kit kung walang malalim na paniniwala sa safety nito," Legaspi added.
(Our Filipino scientists will not release this kit without a deep belief in its safety.)
Asked about when the testing kit recently developed by local scientists can be deployed, UP Manila Chancellor Carmencita Padilla said, "Not all hospitals could run COVID-19 testing because there is a protocol for the local kit."
"We're going to wait for validation which will take about to two to three weeks. After that, it will be submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for validation," she 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
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