News Roundup 10 January 2022
Jan 10, 2022 • 5 min Read
With 33,169 new cases, DOH reports record tally for third straight day | PHILSTAR.COM – The Philippines on Monday reported a record number of COVID-19 infections for a third consecutive day, registering 33,169 additional cases. Monday’s new cases follow the previous record of 28,707 cases logged on Sunday. On Saturday, the country registered 26,458 infections. The new infections brought the total number of COVID-19 cases to nearly three million. Ninety-nine percent of the newly-reported cases occurred from December 28 to January 10, the Department of Health said. More than half of the cases were from Metro Manila. The positivity rate was 46% out of 73,344 tests. This was way above the 5-percent threshold of the World Health Organization for opening economies. According to the DOH, 10 testing laboratories, which contribute 6.2 percent of samples tested, were not able to submit their data. The department also reported 145 additional fatalities, raising the death toll to 52,293. Meanwhile, recoveries increased by 3,725 for a total of 2,788,711. There are currently 157,526 active cases, which represent 5.3% of the confirmed total infections. The surge in infections, which the government has attributed to increased mobility and the presence of the Omicron variant, is threatening to overwhelm the country’s health system anew.
Robredo hits ‘fake news’ purveyors: Stop spreading lies in times of crisis | PHILSTAR.COM – After her own daughter was in the news as the latest target of false information, Vice President Leni Robredo urged accounts creating and circulating false claims to stop their activities, saying that “such dishonesty is detrimental to the public that is already in a difficult situation.” In statement to media on Monday quoting from her weekly radio show, Robredo said that some take advantage of how many people fall for disinformation and misinformation. “But who loses when that happens? It’s the one who believes it that loses,” she said, adding those who believe false information are the real victims, not the subjects of the disinformation. Robredo, who is running for president in the May elections, said that creating and spreading disinformation has become a business for some people, but added, “when there is a crisis, I hope they stop first.” “What they are doing is wrong but it is made worse when you do that [when] many people are already suffering,” she said in Filipino. “That is their offense against the people.” This comes after anonymous and named accounts on social media circulated the false claim that Robredo’s daughter, Tricia, skipped quarantine after arriving from the US before Christmas. Tricia, a medical doctor, tested positive for COVID-19 and was quarantined in an isolation facility until she fully recovered. The vice president’s daughter documented her stay in the isolation facility, where she also contracted dengue, and shared her experience in a social media post.
Guanzon to require Marcos camp to present notarized medical certificate | INQUIRER.NET – Commission on Elections (Comelec) Commissioner Rowena Guanzon on Monday said she will order the camp of presidential aspirant Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to present a notarized medical certificate after the former senator skipped the poll body’s hearing on his disqualification cases. “I will order the doctor and Atty. [Vic] Rodriguez to show cause or require his physician to have his medical certificate notarized,” Guanzon said in a tweet Monday. Rodriguez is Marcos’ chief of staff and spokesperson. On Jan. 7, Comelec’s preliminary conference on Marcos’ disqualification cases was delayed for an hour as the poll body waited for his medical certificate to justify his absence from the hearing. His camp eventually presented a medical certificate stating that the former senator needed to rest due to “difficulty speaking and a painfully congested throat.” However, Marcos was later on found to have been well enough to have been able to virtually attend a radio interview to talk about his platforms on the afternoon of Jan. 6, a day before the preliminary conference.
OVP’s Swab Cab turnout highlights importance of free COVID testing–Robredo | Manila Bulletin – The long queue of individuals wanting to avail themselves of the free antigen test for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at the Office of the Vice President’s “Swab Cab” in Quezon City on Monday, Jan. 10, indicates the importance of free testing, Vice President Leni Robredo said. Robredo, who oversaw the implementation of her office’s Swab Cab free-testing drive, said that the lines were already long very early in the morning at the Immaculate Conception Parish Church in Novaliches. She said it is “an indication that many people wanted to avail of the free swab test to determine if they are sick with COVID-19 or not.” “The sheer number of people who showed up led the OVP Swab Cab team to set up extra swabbing stations to accommodate more individuals,” she added. The Vice President said that of the 26 individuals, who were swabbed by 9:45 a.m., 11 tested positive while 15 turned out to be negative for COVID-19. “Yung pinaka sadya po nitong Swab Cab, kasi ang access talaga sa swabbing medyo mahirap ngayon dahil dagsa, so yung ginagawa po natin, dinadala natin yung Swab Cab sa mga communities (The very purpose of Swab Cab is to bring the testing to the communities because access to swabbing is really limited due to turnout of people),” Robredo said. Robredo is advocating for mass testing as an effort to mitigate the spread of the disease. The OVP Swab Cab was launched last year following a spike in cases but was discontinued with the downtrend in COVID-19 cases. The initiative was, however, reactivated last week due to the new resurgency of COVID-19 cases, especially in Metro Manila.