News Roundup 16 August 2021
Aug 16, 2021 • 4 min Read
DOH reports 14,610 new COVID-19 cases | PHILSTAR.COM – The Philippines on Monday logged 14,610 new coronavirus cases, bringing its total to 1,755,846 The numbers on August 16 mark the sixth straight day of authorities reporting more than 10,000 additional infections. It is also the third consecutive day of seeing 14,000 new Active cases were up 3,924 from the 102,748 on August 15. DOH said seven laboratories did not turn in screening results.
- Active cases: 106,672 or 6.1% of the total
- Recoveries: 10,674, bringing the number to 1,618,808
- Deaths: 27, or now 30,366 in total
DOH: Air purifiers don’t protect vs COVID-19, give false sense of security | PHILSTAR.COM – Wearable air purifiers do not provide protection against COVID-19 and may even contribute to a false sense of security, the Department of Health said on Monday. Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire stressed that the department does not recommend the use of wearable air purifiers, citing lack of evidence that they are effective in reducing COVID-19 transmission. “While air purifiers do not cause harm, these also do not provide protection against COVID-19,” Vergeire said in Filipino. “What it will do, it will give that false sense of security to the public that may lead to complacency,” she added. The Philippine COVID-19 Living Clinical Practice Guidelines of the Institute of Clinical Epidemiology and the National Institutes of Health also do not recommend the use of ionizing air purifier. “One of the studies noted that when an area is inhabited, reducing the particulate matter becomes insignificant once people move within the household, which consequently makes the ionizing air purifier ineffective,” the Living CPG panel said. The panel also noted that ionizers emit ozone, which it said may inflict health hazards through long-term or high-dose exposure. Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia has required all public utility vehicle drivers and conductors in the province to have their own wearable air purifiers starting Monday. Failure to wear an air purifier will mean a fine. Transport group Samahan ng Tsuper at Opereytor Nationwid (Piston) Cebu said the requirement will only burden ordinary drivers and conductors. Instead, it called for genuine health solutions to the pandemic. “The air purifier is a mere band-aid solution. What the people need now is to hasten the distribution of free and safe vaccines, and free swab testing,” Greg Perez, chairperson of Piston-Cebu, said in Cebuano.
Delta is ‘pandemic of unvaccinated’ bigger than breakthrough infections | INQUIRER.NET – The spread of Delta, a variant of SARS Cov2, is now considered as a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” which is making vaccination a more urgent measure to fight COVID-19 even if rare infections emerge among those already fully vaccinated. Scientists are one in concluding that vaccines are highly effective in preventing COVID-19, the disease, but are also in agreement that these scientific interventions are not 100 percent successful in preventing transmission of SARS Cov2, the virus that causes the disease and its mutations. Viruses are technically non-living things that need living cells as hosts to multiply, according to mutliple scientific studies. In the case of SARS Cov2, the main hosts are humans. Experts have coined a term for infections among individuals who had already received one or two doses of vaccines—breakthrough. In the Philippines, health authorities had announced that breakthrough infections represented only 0.0013 percent of 9.1 million fully vaccinated individuals, or those who had already completed two-dose regimens.
Duque not yet off the hook from DOH audit deficiencies — Drilon | Manila Bulletin – Secretary Francisco Duque III is still not “off the hook” from the reported audit deficiencies of the Department of Health (DOH), even as the state auditors said that they have yet to find that COVID-19 funds were lost to corruption, Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon said on Monday, August 16. Drilon maintained that Duque must explain on the recent report of the Commission on Audit (COA) about the DOH’s “various deficiencies” in spending over P67 billion of coronavirus response funds. “Yes, the COA has said that the audit findings are not conclusive of corruption but that does not take Sec Duque off the hook,” Drilon said in an interview with CNN Philippines. “Because while the COA said the findings are not conclusive of corruption, the COA findings clearly show the dismal inefficiencies and lack of sense of urgency in DOH, demonstrating poor management and leadership,” he added. The COA explicitly called on DOH to “act with urgency and efficiency in the utilization of COVID-19 fund”, Drilon pointed out. The Senate Blue Ribbon Committee will launch on Wednesday, August 18, on the COA’s 2020 audit report on the DOH. But Senator Richard Gordon, its chairman, said he will prioritize the delay in the benefits of health workers. Drilon was convinced that the DOH “clearly” mismanaged the country’s COVID-19 response, citing the P42.2 billion is transferred to the Department of Budget and Management’s (DBM) procurement service, and unobligated allocations amounting to P24.6 billion. “Isn’t this criminal? You have so much funds which are unobligated? You have funds that are placed in a procurement service agency of the DBM and, yet, you have lack of ventilators and our health personnel are complaining they have not been paid their allowances,” the Senate’s chief fiscalizer said.
