COVID-19 cases in Philippines surge to 552 as DOH logs 2 more deaths
MANILA, Philippines (Update 3, 5:47 p.m.) — The Philippines on Tuesday afternoon reported more cases of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), bringing the country’s total count above the 500-level.
The Department of Health confirmed there are now 552 cases of the disease in the country after detecting 90 new infections.
The death toll rose to 35, the DOH added.
The country’s 34th fatality was a 71-year-old Filipino male from Quezon City who had no travel and exposure history.
Identified as Patient 215, the man passed away on March 24 due to severe pneumonia caused by COVID-19, hypertensive cardiovascular disease and cardiac dysrhythmia.
A 76-year-old Filipino male from Cavite also died due to COVID-19, community-acquired pneumonia high risk, acute respiratory failure, heart failure, ST-elevation myocardial infarction.
He expired on March 14 but was only confirmed to have caught the virus on March 20.
Meanwhile, two more patients have recovered, raising the total to 20.
A 21-year-old Filipino female from Davao de Oro with travel history to United Kingdom and Qatar became the country’s 19th recovery. She was discharged on March 23 after testing negative once.
A 76-year-old Filipino female from Quezon City who had exposure to known COVID-19 cases also survived the illness. The senior citizen was discharged on March 22 after testing negative once.
COVID-19 may be fatal for the elderly, people who are immunocompromised and those with underlying medical condition, the World Health Organization said.
Detections expected to rise each day
Health authorities said the number of confirmed cases in the country is expected to balloon in the coming days as more people suspected of contracting the disease get tested following the arrival of 100,000 test kits from donor countries China, South Korea and Brunei.
In virus-hit countries like South Korea and Singapore, widespread testing is crucial in their fight against the pandemic as it allows authorities to isolate and treat infected people.
But even with new supplies, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III earlier told Philstar.com that mass testing — where even asymptomatic individuals exposed to infected patients are tested — cannot be done in the Philippines because the country’s ill-equipped healthcare system lacks the capabilities to do so.
More than a week into the month-long Luzon lockdown, President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday asked Congress to grant him special powers to stem the contagion rate and mitigate the economic damage from the virus. If the additional powers were enacted into law, it would set the stage for one of the most far-reaching measures in the world to arrest the spread of the virus.
WHO warned that the new coronavirus pandemic is accelerating after it took just days for the virus to infect another 100,000 cases.
The number of deaths caused by the virus soared past 16,000, with more than 382,644 people infected worldwide.
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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