COVID-19 infections in Philippines climb to 27,238 with 457 new cases
MANILA, Philippines (Update 1, 5:32 p.m.) — The country’s confirmed coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infections jumped to 27,238 Wednesday after 457 cases were added to the national tally.
Some 342 cases were identified as “fresh” or patients who tested positive within the last three days. Forty-two percent of these cases were from Metro Manila, while around 30% were from Central Visayas. The remaining 28% were spread out across the country.
Meanwhile, 115 cases were from the Department of Health’s validation backlog—51% of which were detected in Central Visayas. Metro Manila accounted for 25% of the late cases.
Hundreds of cases were still being detected daily despite the implementation of quarantine measures for three months.
The DOH also reported 268 new recoveries, raising the total number of COVID-19 survivors to 6,820. The day before, the country logged record-high 301 additional recoveries.
But five more fatalities were recorded, pushing the death toll to 1,108.
A total of 484,181 individuals have been tested so far as of Monday.
President Rodrigo Duterte once again placed Cebu City under enhanced community quarantine after it saw a marked increase in COVID-19 cases. With 2,656 active cases as of Monday, it is now the city with the highest number of active cases in the country.
Metro Manila—still considered the nation’s outbreak epicenter—would remain under general community quarantine until the end of the month.
Dexamethasone no ‘magic pill’ vs COVID-19
DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the steroid dexamethasone is not a “magic pill” against the severe respiratory illness.
“Hindi ito lunas sa COVID-19. Inaadminister ito sa critical patients para ma-manage ang kanilang kalagayan. Hindi rin nito mapipigilan ang pagkahawa mula sa COVID-19,” Vergeire said.
(This is not a cure to COVID-19. This is only administered to critical patients to manage their conditions. This will not also prevent people from contracting COVID-19.)
The department issued the statement after preliminary results of a study by Oxford University researchers showed that dexamethasone reduced deaths by 35% among those who could only breathe with the help of a ventilator. It also reduced deaths of those receiving oxygen by a fifth.
Vergeire stressed the study needs to be peer-reviewed first before its findings are deemed acceptable.
At least 8.1 million people have now been infected with COVID-19 worldwide since it emerged in China late in 2019, and more than 440,000 people have died.
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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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