Philippines

MANILA, Feb 6 (NNN-PNA) – The Philippines’ Department of Health (DOH), reported 7,689 new COVID-19 infections yesterday, pushing the number of confirmed cases in the country to 3,601,471.

The DOH said, only one more person died from COVID-19 complications, bringing the country’s death toll to 54,214.

The number of active cases dropped to 136,436, as the country’s positivity rate fell further to 23.3 percent.

The DOH said, the country’s number of COVID-19 cases and hospital admissions have steadily fallen since the fourth wave peaked in mid-Jan.

MANILA, Jan 28 (NNN-PNA) – The Philippines will allow entry of fully vaccinated foreigners from countries and regions with visa-free entry to the Philippines, starting Feb 10, authorities said today.

Cabinet Secretary, Karlo Nograles, said, foreigners travelling for business and tourism purposes must present vaccination certificates and passports valid for at least six months, at the time of arrival. People aged under 18 are exempted from this measure, he added.

(AP) --- Current and former staffers have accused the top director of the World Health Organization in the Western Pacific of racist, unethical and abusive behavior that has undermined the U.N. health agency’s efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

MANILA, Jan 20 (NNN-PNA) – The Philippine government signed a commercial contract worth 2.8 billion U.S. dollars, with Chinese contractors, to build the “fastest and longest railway” in the country, that connects southern Luzon provinces, China’s Ambassador to the Philippines, Huang Xilian said, in a statement.

MANILA, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said on Thursday people who have not taken COVID-19 shots will be arrested if they disobeyed stay-at-home orders as infections hit a three-month high.

Duterte in an televised address to the nation said he was asking community leaders to look for unvaccinated people and make sure they were confined to their homes.

"If he refuses, if he goes out his house and goes around the community, he can be restrained. If he refuses, the captain is empowered now to arrest recalcitrant persons," Duterte said.

MANILA, Dec 31 (Reuters) - The Philippine death toll from Typhoon Rai has crossed the 400 mark, the disaster agency said on Friday, as officials in some hard-hit provinces appealed for more supplies of food, water and shelter materials about two weeks after the storm struck.

Rai was the 15th and deadliest typhoon to hit the Southeast Asian nation this year.

Reported deaths had reached 405, mostly due to drowning, fallen trees and landslides, Ricardo Jalad, chief of the national disaster agency, told a news conference. He said 82 were missing and 1,147 injured.

MANILA, Dec 28 (NNN-PNA) – The death toll from Typhoon Rai in the Philippines has surged to 389, with 64 more missing, a government disaster agency said, yesterday.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said that, the typhoon, which made landfall in the Philippines on Dec 16, also injured 1,146.

The agency said, the the typhoon has affected more than 4.2 million people in 11 regions in central and southern parts of the Philippines, as well as, parts of the main Luzon Island.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of people in the Philippines, Asia’s largest Roman Catholic nation, marked Christmas on Saturday without homes, adequate food and water, electricity and cellphone connections after a powerful typhoon left at least 375 people dead last week and devastated mostly central island provinces.

Elsewhere, New Zealanders are celebrating Christmas in the warmth of mid-summer with few restrictions, in one of the few countries in the world largely untouched by the omicron variant of COVID-19.

MANILA, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- China offered 1 million U.S. dollars in cash and another 4,725 tons of rice on Wednesday to help the victims of Typhoon Rai in the Philippines.

Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Huang Xilian announced the assistance at the handover ceremony of the rice, the last batch of the 10,000 tons that China donated to the Philippines.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The governor of a central Philippine province devastated by Typhoon Rai last week pleaded on radio Tuesday for the government to quickly send food and other aid, warning that without outside help, army troops and police forces would have to be deployed to prevent looting amid growing hunger.