News Roundup 22 April 2021
Apr 22, 2021 • 5 min Read
Philippines sees 8,767 new COVID-19 cases | PHILSTAR.COM – The Philippines on Thursday recorded 8,767 additional COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number of infections to 971,049.
- Active cases: 107,988 or 11.1% of the total
- Recoveries: 17,138, pushing total to 846,691
- Deaths: 105, bringing total to 16,370
Worried police have profiled you? IBP has guidance on what to do | PHILSTAR.COM – Fear of possible police profiling of her and her family forced the organizer of a community pantry in Pandacan, Manila to fold the table she put up to give food to their community. In a Facebook post, organizer Marikit Arellano said they filled out a form that the police gave them on Monday, a day before Manila Mayor Isko Moreno announced that community pantries may be put up in the capital. “We were scared of what they might do if we refused to fill it up…We fear for our personal security because of what happened,” she said in Filipino. The National Privacy Commission on Wednesday morning called for a stop to what it said was the unwarranted profiling of community pantry organizers whom they also hailed as “heroes” of the pandemic by helping families put food on their tables. If you police have asked for your personal data and you fear that you have been profiled, Integrated Bar of the Philippines President Domingo Egon Cayosa gives guidance on what you could do. Cayosa said people can request assistance from the National Privacy Commission, adding also that he hopes more people know that “they need not answer, they need not give those details even to police if there is no legal basis.” Earlier this week, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said community pantry organizers have no obligation to fill out any forms since what they have put up is not a business. Guevarra said Monday that interrogating community pantry organizers is improper unless there is reason to believe that they violated a law, ordinance, rule or regulation. Cayosa stressed that Filipinos have the basic constitutional right to privacy, which goes beyond privacy “in our houses, in our offices but also privacy to the information, personal information.” “And nobody has the right to demand that of us unless there’s clear legal basis. In this particular case, the PNP has yet to provide the clear legal basis. Is there a court order? Was there a crime committed?” he added. If people fear that police took their personal information without sound legal basis, they can ask cops to erase it. “Secondly, they can, if there was no legal basis for those personal details and information that was taken by the police officers, they can request that this data be deleted.” But the IBP president also urged those who can to file appropriate complaints against those who conduct unwarranted profiling to curb the practice. “Thirdly, they can, and it should be encouraged, to stop this, they can take legal action against the police officers,” he said. Cayosa explained that the violation of the Data Privacy Act carries a penal sanction.
House-to-house COVID-19 testing pressed to get ‘true’ PH state | INQUIRER.NET – The Department of Health (DOH) admitted on Wednesday that there was a need to expand testing for the coronavirus, including doing it house-to-house with help from local governments. Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the DOH was using every means to capture the true state of COVID-19 infections in the country and that the local governments were already doing the neighborhood tests of close contacts, both asymptomatic and symptomatic cases. The country has been reporting a higher positivity rate in the past weeks. On Wednesday, the DOH reported a positivity rate 19.5 percent for tests conducted on April 19, Monday, still high but markedly lower than the 24.2 percent on April 3. DOH said 37,235 individuals were tested on Monday. Of those tested, 7,260 or nearly one in every five tested were positive. Vergeire explained that the “high positivity rate” could mean the DOH was “not testing enough.” “However, it can also be simply because there are many positive cases,” she said. Vice President Leni Robredo urged the government to tests 90,000 individuals in Metro Manila alone when the national capital was under enhanced community quarantine.
Kindness is everyone’s color: Lorenzana, Sobejana back community pantry | Manila Bulletin – Top defense and military officials have supported the operations of the community pantry in various parts of the country despite attempts by some individuals, including ranking government officials, to connect some of the organizers to the communist rebels. On Thursday for instance, soldiers from the Civil Relations Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) visited at least two community pantries in Quezon City and donated vegetables and other food items. Those visited include the Maginhawa Community Pantry whose organizer Anna Patricia Non was allegedly red-tagged by the two spokespersons of the National Task Force to End Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy and Army Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade. On the part of DND Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, he said it even made them think to deploy the AFP Mobile Kitchen in order to maximize the assistance to the people affected by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. “Kindness is everyone’s color. Kahit ano pa ang paniniwala nya, basta taos pusong tumutulong, susuportahan natin. (Whatever her belief, for as long as she is sincerely helping, we will support it),” said Lorenzana, referring to Anna Patricia Non, the woman behind the Maginhawa Community Pantry which is considered as the mother of all community pantries in the Philippines.
