COVID-19 cases in Philippines now over 26,000 as recoveries top 6,000
MANILA, Philippines (Updated 5:40 p.m.) — More than 26,000 people in the Philippines have been sickened by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as President Rodrigo Duterte is set to decide on the fate of the country’s virus restrictions later Monday.
The Department of Health registered 470 new COVID-19 infections Monday, pushing the national caseload to 26,420.
Of the newly-validated cases, 348 were patients who tested positive within the last three days. Thirty-eight percent of these cases were detected in Metro Manila, while 23% were from Central Visayas. The remaining 40% were reported elsewhere in the country.
There were also 142 late cases or patients who tested positive from at least four days earlier.
The DOH also logged 298 additional COVID-19 survivors—the highest number of COVID-19 recoveries in a day since the outbreak began in the Philippines. This raised the total number of COVID-19 survivors to 6,252.
Total recoveries accounted for around 24% of the nation’s confirmed cases.
But 10 more people succumbed to COVID-19, bringing the nation’s death toll to 1,098. Three of the deaths happened on June 11, one on June 11, while the remaining six died months ago.
The DOH on Sunday reported a downward trend in the country’s COVID-19 fatality rate despite spikes in the number of deaths in the past two days. The case fatality rate in the Philippines stood at 4.24%—lower than the global average of 5.6%.
In a Palace briefing, DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said it is aiming to test 1.5% of the country’s almost 110 million population for the coronavirus. A total of 467,564 persons have been tested in the country as of June 13.
Duterte is expected to announce his decision on whether or not Metro Manila—the center of the nation’s coronavirus outbreak— and some urban centers will shift to more relaxed modified general community quarantine on June 15.
The novel coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 432,000 people out of at least 7.89 million infected worldwide.
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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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