Philippines' COVID-19 caseload hits 122,754 with 2,168 deaths
MANILA, Philippines (Updated 4:25 p.m.) — The Philippines recorded 3,379 new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases Friday, pushing the national caseload to over 122,000, the Department of Health said.
To date, the country has 122,754 COVID-19 cases—the most in Southeast Asia. This is higher than Indonesia’s 118,753 infections as of Thursday.
Around 55% of the newly-reported cases were from outbreak epicenter Metro Manila, which returned to a tougher lockdown due to a recent surge in infections. Meanwhile, Rizal had 314 cases, Laguna has 276, Cavite had 145 and Quezon had 66.
The death toll rose by 24 to 2,168.
Meanwhile, recoveries grew to 66,852 after 96 more people were reported to have survived the disease. Total recoveries accounted for around 54% on the country’s confirmed cases.
The DOH said it had removed 85 cases from the total case count.
Palace: Wrong to say Philippines has more cases than Indonesia
The Philippines recorded the highest number of virus cases in Southeast Asia despite imposing the longest lockdown in the region.
But Malacañang refused to accept this fact and claimed the numbers were only a product of the country’s increased testing capacity. Some 1.577 million people have been tested so far for coronavirus.
“Dahil mas maigting ang ating pagte-test, hindi po totoo na mas marami tayong kaso sa Indonesia. Hindi lang nalalaman ng mga Indonesian kung sino sino ‘yung mga umiikot na mayroong sakit. At least tayo, alam natin kung sino sila,” presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said in a press briefing.
(Because we are more aggressive in testing, it’s not true that we have more cases than Indonesia. The Indonesians just don’t know yet who among them are roaming with the virus. At least, for us, we already know.)
But the Philippines also has 53,734 active cases or patients who are currently ill—higher than Indonesia’s 37,587 active cases.
In terms of population ratio versus number of cases, the Philippines has 1,058 cases per million people, while Indonesia has 427 cases per million, according to Our World in Data.
President Rodrigo Duterte announced late Sunday a two-week lockdown in Metro Manila, Bulacan, Rizal, Cavite and Laguna after medical workers warned the health care system could collapse as a result of increasing number of coronavirus patients.
The number of virus cases recorded worldwide passed 19 million with more than 712,000 deaths.
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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