News Roundup 12 January 2022
Jan 12, 2022 • 4 min Read
Philippines logs 32,246 new infections; active cases at 208,164 | PHILSTAR.COM – The Department of Health reported Wednesday 32,246 additional COVID-19 infections, bringing the number of active cases to 208,164. The active case count is the highest so far. In total, the Philippines has recorded 3,058,634 cases since the start of the pandemic. The country is seeing a dramatic rise in infections this month following the detection of the hyper-transmissible Omicron variant and increased mobility during the holiday season. According to the DOH, Metro Manila (56%), Calabarzon (22%) and Central Luzon were the regions with the most number of cases in the recent two weeks. The positivity rate was 45.7% out of 63,903 tests. This was way above the 5-percent threshold of the World Health Organization for opening economies. Eleven testing laboratories did not submit their data to the department. The death toll hit 52,654 after 144 more patients died, while recoveries increased by 5,063 to 2,797,816. Of the active cases, 6,435 are asymptomatic, 197,091 have mild symptoms, 2,872 are moderate, 1,468 have severe infection, and 298 are in critical condition.
Holding online platforms liable ‘quick solution’ vs disinformation, Senate panel told | INQUIRER.NET – Nobel Peace Prize awardee and Rappler CEO Maria Ressa told a Senate panel that creating a law that would hold accountable online platforms that continue to allow the proliferation of false information would be a “quick solution” to defeat disinformation. During Wednesday’s hearing of the Senate constitutional amendments committee, Ressa stressed the need to eradicate disinformation in order to have an “integrity of elections” this year. The Senate panel is reviewing the country’s criminal laws to keep pace with the rise of social media use in the Philippines. “If we don’t have an integrity of facts, we will not have integrity of elections. If you look at every study of fascism globally, they first tear down the facts,” Ressa said. “Facebook is now the world’s largest distributor of news and yet studies have shown that lies laced with anger and hate spread faster and further than the really boring facts. So the reality is, the platforms that deliver the facts to you are biased against facts, they are biased against journalists. And they are, by design, dividing us and radicalizing us,” she added. The Nobel laureate said one of the faster ways to defeat disinformation is to create a law that would penalize technology and social media companies that continue to allow disinformation and misinformation to proliferate on their platforms. “In our country, what can we do? The quick solution would be to actually hold the platforms accountable for what they spread, what they allow to spread. And when you do that, I bet you that you would automatically see a shrinking of information operations,” Ressa said.
CHR expresses ‘grave concern’ over DOTr’s ‘No Vaccine, No Ride’ policy| Manila Bulletin – The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) expressed “grave concern” over the “No Vaccine, No Ride” policy of the Department of Transportation (DOTr) as it slammed the policy as a “restriction to the exercise and enjoyment of the fundamental rights of Filipinos.” The DOTr had announced that it will enforce the policy while the National Capital Region (NCR) is under COVID Alert Level 3. CHR Spokesperson Jacqueline Ann de Guia, on Wednesday, Jan. 12, said the commission previously recognized the validity of the national government’s “no vaccine, no labas” policy since there was an assurance that the said restriction will not result in the denial of public services such as using public transportation. “CHR fears that, while there is no direct prohibition on the right to travel with the ‘no vaccine, no ride’ policy in public transport for the unvaccinated, this policy effectively restricts the exercise and enjoyment of fundamental rights,” De Guia said. She pointed out that “the hard truth is that ordinary Filipinos continue to rely on public transportation to access basic needs, such as for food, work, and accessing health services.” “With the DOTr‘s ‘no vaccine, no ride’ policy, even those exempted under this policy may be restricted in accessing essential goods and services for having no or limited access to private vehicles,” she lamented. She cited the Human Rights Committee’s General Comment No. 27 on the freedom of movement: “It is not sufficient that the restrictions serve the permissible purposes; they must also be necessary to protect them. Restrictive measures must conform to the principle of proportionality; they must be appropriate to achieve their protective function; they must be the least intrusive instrument amongst those which might achieve the desired result; and they must be proportionate to the interest to be protected.”
