Recoveries soar past 1,000 as COVID-19 cases in Philippines top 8,000
MANILA, Philippines (Update 1, 5:19 p.m.) — The coronavirus outbreak has already infected more than 8,000 people in the Philippines nearly three months after health authorities first detected a case.
The Department of Health recorded 8,212 infections in the country Wednesday, with the addition of 254 more infections in the past 24 hours.
The number of people who have survived the severe respiratory illness reached 1,023 after 48 new recoveries were reported.
Meanwhile, the country saw 28 additional fatalities related to COVID-19. This pushed the total number of patients who died from the coronavirus to 558.
The country is now capable of conducting 6,320 coronavirus tests each day but Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the Philippines is likely to miss its target of 8,000 tests per day by the end of April.
To date, 89,021 have been tested in the country.
Metro Manila, Central Luzon except Aurora province, Calabarzon, Pangasinan, Benguet including Baguio City, Iloilo, Cebu and Davao City will remain under enhanced community quarantine until May 15 to further quell the spread of the virus.
32 deaths among health workers
The total number of healthcare workers in the Philippines who have contracted COVID-19 reached 1,552 as of Wednesday.
Healthcare workers accounted for 19% of the country’s confirmed infections.
Of the number, 571 are nurses, while 548 are doctors. Ninety-seven nursing assistances, 60 medical technologists, 30 radiologic technologists, 18 respiratory therapists, 17 midwives and 11 pharmacists have also been infected with COVID-19.
The remaining 200 healthcare workers with coronavirus are barangay health workers, administrative aides and utility aides.
Doctors accounted for most of the fatalities, representing 24 of 32 total deaths.
The pandemic has claimed the lives of 216,989 people out of the 3.1 million infected worldwide.
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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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