127 Filipinos abroad added to DFA's COVID-19 count last week
MANILA, Philippines — Foreign affairs officials last week saw 127 added to its count of Filipinos abroad infected with the coronavirus, with the total now at 13,018.
The number overseas surpassed the 13,000th mark from the period of January 3 to 9, per daily bulletins by the DFA.
Some 67 additional cases were reported on January 5, the highest last week, followed by 37 new Filipino patients on January 4.
No explanation was given in both instances, but the department had attributed spikes before to late reports of countries with private concerns.
There were also no new infections, deaths and recoveries reported on Sunday, January 10.
This means that the fatality count is still at 934, while the number of patients who got well are still at 8,460.
Some 3,624 also continue to receive treatment.
The Middle East remains with the highest number of Filipino cases at 7,712, 601 deaths and 4,690 recoveries.
Asia follows with 2,710 cases, 21 deaths and 1,893 recoveries.
Europe, meanwhile, now has 1,809 Filipinos infected, 118 dead and 1,351 recovered, while the Americas have 787 cases, 194 fatalities and 526 recoveries.
Globally, there are now 89.64 million individuals across 191 countries sick with the COVID-19, with deaths nearing two million at 1.92 million.
Nearly a year since the deadly virus reached various countries, the world now faces the threat of its new variant.
The Philippines has since imposed travel restrictions to countries with confirmed cases as it remains on the lookout once it reaches its shores.
America remains with the highest number of infections at 22.1 million, as well as deaths at over 372,000.
India (10.4 million), Brazil (8.07 million), Russia (3.3 million) and the United Kingdom (3.02) where the new variant was first detected, follow the US in the top 5 list of countries with most cases.
Manila, with its total of 487,690 infections, put it at the 30th spot, after placing between 28th to 29th for a long time, next only to Israel's 487,034.
It continues to be the second highest in Southeast Asia, following Indonesia's more than 818,000 cases to date. — Christian Deiparine
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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