News Roundup 26 August 2021
Aug 26, 2021 • 4 min Read
Philippines reports 16,313 more COVID-19 cases | PHILSTAR.COM – Health authorities on Thursday listed 16,313 new coronavirus cases to push the Philippines’ total to 1,899,200. Today’s numbers saw active cases up by 6,543 from the 125,378 on August 26. The Department of Health said five laboratories did not turn in screening results.
- Active cases: 131,921 or 6.9% of the total
- Recoveries: 9,659, bringing the number to 1,734,551
- Deaths: 236, or now 32,728 in total
Palace to have DICT explain if StaySafe app is of any use | PHILSTAR.COM – Malacañang wants the Department of Information and Communications Technology to explain why the health department thinks that the StaySafe application has not helped COVID-19 contact-tracing efforts much. StaySafe was designed to unify the contact-tracing efforts in the Philippines and was made mandatory by the national government as early as last December. Data collected through the application will be linked to the health department’s surveillance and contact tracing platform COVID Kaya or the COVID-19 document repository system. However, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III told senators Wednesday that the application has had almost no impact on contact tracing, which is among the strategies against the spread of COVID-19 and for the quick treatment of those who have been infected by or exposed to COVID-19 patients.
Lawyers, labor leaders, LGBT sectors want Robredo for president in 2022 | INQUIRER.NET – More and more representatives of various sectors have been asking Vice President Leni Robredo to seriously consider running for president in the 2022 national elections. According to Team Leni Robredo, there would be several groups that will conduct virtual launches of their official campaign on Friday, in an attempt to persuade the Vice President to make a presidential bid. One of the groups, dubbed Lawyers for Leni, said that it is important for someone like Robredo — also a lawyer by profession — to be elected as president considering that the rule of law has heavily deteriorated under President Rodrigo Duterte’s term. They expressed belief that the rule of law would be restored if Robredo is elected president. “As lawyers, we have seen how respect for the rule of law has deteriorated in the past five years. A lot of times, the law was used to serve personal interests of a few instead of being an instrument to bring social justice,” lawyer Ram Ramos, who is spokesperson of Lawyers for Leni, said in a statement. “As of today, we have almost 300 signatures from lawyers who support Leni Robredo,” said Ramos. Lawyers for Leni said that different legal luminaries will be delivering messages of support during the program, which would be streamed live on Facebook on Friday, 11:00 a.m. The list includes former Supreme Court spokesperson and Free Legal Assistance Group member Theodore Te, Far Eastern University law school Dean Mel Sta. Maria and lawyer Ampy Sta. Maria. Aside from Lawyers for Leni, other groups like the Alliance of Labor Leaders for Leni, the LGBTQIA+ for Leni, and the Leni for You movement would also start their respective campaigns in support of Robredo’s possible presidential bid. The Alliance of Labor Leaders for Leni would start their program at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, and it would be streamed at www.facebook.com/LahatParaKayLeni. LGBTQIA+ for Leni would start by 1:00 p.m. (https://www.facebook.com/LGBTQIAforLeni/), while the Leni for You movement starts at 6:00 p.m. (https://www.facebook.com/LeniForYou/), also on Friday. This is not the first time that groups openly declared their support for Robredo. On Wednesday, Team Leni Robredo also said that multi-sectoral and cause-oriented groups in Bulacan formed the Bulacan for Leni, to ask the Vice President to run so that the current administration’s alleged reign of abuse and inefficiency would come to an end.
Carpio to youth leaders: ‘Oppose gov’t moves to curtail freedom’ | Manila Bulletin – Retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio told the youth to oppose “any attempt by the government to curtail our freedom,” pointing particularly to the controversial Anti-Terror Law that the Duterte administration allegedly uses to intimidate critics and activists. “Every citizen must oppose every time the government rises to encroaching individual freedoms, we must oppose and that’s the only assurance because if we don’t do that then we will lose all our freedoms,” he said during the launch of the 1Sambayan chapter of the De La Salle University and the Ateneo de Manila University. Carpio is one of the lead convenors of opposition coalition 1Sambayan, which hopes to unify the opposition and come up with a list of candidates who will face the administration’s bet in next year’s polls. “Because if we don’t oppose then you lose and you lose and you lose until it becomes now part of the normal state of things where you lost your civil liberties,” he told the participants in the virtual forum. As one of the individuals who filed a case against the Anti-Terror Law before the Supreme Court, Carpio said the legislation, which allows the detention of “suspects” for 14 days without charge, “is a very bad law.”
