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WHO: No benefit for general public to wear mask amid nCoV scare

Patricia Lourdes Viray - Philstar.com
WHO: No benefit for general public to wear mask amid nCoV scare
People buying protective masks at a medical supplies store in Manila on January 31, 2020.
AFP / Ted Aljibe

MANILA, Philippines — The World Health Organization on Tuesday said it does not see any benefit of the general public wearing masks amid the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) threat.

Rabindra Abeyasinghe, acting WHO representative in the Philippines, said it would be preferable to reserve masks for high-risk individuals, including health workers.

"Our message is that we need to be rational about the use of masks. Factually, it shows that non-symptomatic people using masks — it will give them a false sense of confidence and put them at more risk because they tend to wash hands less," Abeyasinghe said in a Senate hearing.

The WHO representative stressed that people with respiratory symptoms need to practice cough etiquette and wear masks but everybody should wash their hands frequently.

Abeyasinghe added that those with respiratory symptoms, such as coughs and colds, should wear their masks properly and wash their hands regularly.

"Just because you wear a mask you should not neglect keeping your hands clean because if you touch the mask and if you have droplets on the outer surface of the mask that somebody else coughed on, you can get infected so what is more important is hand hygiene," he said.

The WHO doctor also warned that the virus can be present on utensils and other home items where an infected person has coughed.

Citing evidence, Abeyasinghe told the Senate inquiry that the virus can survive on those surfaces from eight to 10 hours.

"If you have somebody sick who is having respiratory symptoms make sure that you make an effort to clean surfaces that are handled by those people," the WHO representative said.

China's National Health Commission confirmed that infections in the 2019-nCoV outbreak have passed 20,400 nationwide with 3,235 cases confirmed.

The first death from the virus has been recorded in the Philippines last Saturday, which is also the second confirmed case of the illness in the country.

The Department of Health announced that a 44-year-old Chinese man, which is a companion of the first confirmed 2019-nCoV patient in the country, died days after he was admitted for fever, cough and sore throat.

2019-NCOV-ACURE RESPIRATORY DISEASE

NOVEL CORONAVIRUS

RABINDRA ABEYASINGHE

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION

As It Happens
LATEST UPDATE: October 1, 2023 - 2:35pm

Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.

October 1, 2023 - 2:35pm

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

August 18, 2023 - 4:25pm

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

August 11, 2023 - 7:07pm

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

June 24, 2023 - 11:50am

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 

June 15, 2023 - 5:42pm

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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