Philippines posts 487 recoveries as COVID-19 cases hit 5,878
MANILA, Philippines (Update 1, 4:45 p.m.) — The Philippines recorded another big increase in the number of people who have recovered from the coronavirus disease, with 52 new recoveries logged Friday.
The new figure, however, was lower than the record-high 82 recoveries reported on Thursday. In total, 487 people have been cleared of the virus.
The Philippines now has 5,878 confirmed infections after 218 additional cases were detected.
Meanwhile, 25 more people have died from the disease, raising the national death toll to 387.
The country has a case fatality rate of 6.6%—slightly higher than the global average.
Sixty-nine percent of the nation’s confirmed infections or 4,059 were detected in outbreak epicenter Metro Manila. There are 1,348 infections in the rest of Luzon, 152 in Visayas and 149 in Mindanao. Some 170 cases are still up for validation.
The number of individuals who have been tested stood at 42,215 as of Thursday.
The Bureau of Jail Management and Penology announced Friday that nine inmates have tested positive for COVID-19 as calls for release of the elderly, sick and vulnerable prisoners mount.
The quarantine of Luzon was extended until April 30, with only essential workers and people buying necessities or medicine allowed to go outside their homes.
Out of the over 2.1 million infected individuals across the globe, more than 145,000 have died from the coronavirus pandemic.
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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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