News Roundup 07 August 2020
Aug 07, 2020 • 3 min Read
Philippines’ COVID-19 caseload hits 122,754 with 2,168 deaths | PHILSTAR.COM – The Philippines recorded 3,379 new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases Friday, pushing the national caseload to over 122,000, the Department of Health said. To date, the country has 122,754 COVID-19 cases—the most in Southeast Asia. This is higher than Indonesia’s 118,753 infections as of Thursday. The death toll rose by 24 to 2,168. Meanwhile, recoveries grew to 66,852 after 96 more people were reported to have survived the disease.
Pangilinan bats for giving tax cuts to Filipino makers of PPEs, test kits, other medical supplies | PHILSTAR.COM – Sen. Kiko Pangilinan on Friday urged the government to give tax exemptions to Filipino companies that make supplies necessary to the country’s COVID-19 response. According to Pangilinan, this would incentivize local companies to manufacture surgical masks, personal protective equipment, test kits, ventilators and other medical products, ensuring that the country will have an adequate supply of the necessary items. “The [COVID-19 crisis] revealed that these critical medical supplies are not being made in the Philippines. At the onset of the pandemic, the supply of these critical products and [their] raw materials became scarce, inaccessible and expensive,” he said in a mix of Filipino and English. Pangilinan said he filed Senate Bill 1759, or the Pandemic Protection Act of 2020, “in order to avoid a similar dilemma in the future.”
Lawmaker’s wife accuses him of concubinage, gets threats from his son | INQUIRER.NET – The wife of Maguindanao Rep. Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu has accused him of having affairs with other women, an allegation that she made public in several Facebook posts that had gone viral. The now-deleted posts of Mylene Mangudadatu, but which still circulated in social media circles, accused the lawmaker of keeping two mistresses, one of which is a beauty queen. In a text message to INQUIRER.net on Friday, Mangudadatu refused to respond to Mylene’s accusations following legal advice. On August 4, Mylene again posted about receiving a threat from a certain KuyaKing Mangudadatu, said to be one of the congressman’s children. She also posted a screenshot of their encounter, telling her to leave his father alone. “Just received a threat from the comments section from the first son of Cong. Toto Mangudadatu, a Board Member of Maguindanao Province,” she said. “I therefore publicly disclose that if anything happens to me, this person will be of first person of interest for investigation,” Mylene added.
Doctors, nurses in rural areas oppose government’s plan for them to substitute for NCR medical workers | Manila Bulletin – Doctors and nurses in the rural areas of the country are opposing the government’s plan to pull them out of their communities and substitute for medical workers in the National Capital Region (NCR) saying this will put geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas (GIDA) at risk of COVID-19. “Paano kapag from NCR, tapos bumalik kami sa area, kami pa ang mag dala ng virus? (What will happen if we return to our communities and it turns out that we have the virus?),” Dr. Carissa Rulla, a member of the Doctor to the Barrios (DTTB) in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) told DZMM Teleradyo on Friday. Rulla said the communities they serve are those who have yet to be reached by the government’s health services which makes it even more necessary for them to stay.
PH slips into recession | The Manila Times – The Philippines slipped into “technical recession” in the second quarter of 2020, contracting by 16.5 percent as the lockdown to stem the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) took its toll on industries and businesses, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported on Thursday. It was the lowest quarterly growth since 1981. A technical recession occurs when the gross domestic product (GDP) shrinks for two consecutive quarters. The second-quarter decline is far worse than the -0.7 percent in the first and a reversal from the 5.4 percent growth in the second quarter of 2019. It also exceeded the -11 to -14 percent projection of economists earlier polled by The Manila Times.
