KAKAMMPI News

Ian Young, South China Morning Post Posted at Jan 08 2021 01:21 PM The circumstances of the December 7 virtual town hall meeting with relatives of residents at the Little Mountain Place care home were grim: a Covid-19 outbreak had been reported. In the fortnight since the first case had been diagnosed in the suburban Vancouver facility, mostly occupied by elders of the Chinese and Asian communities, 59 residents had become infected and five had died. But Dr Michael Schwandt, a medical health officer with the Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) authority, sounded almost upbeat on the Zoom call, which was leaked to the South China Morning Post. He expressed confidence that anti-infection protocols would succeed; after all, a previous outbreak at Little Mountain Place in March had been swiftly stamped out. Precautions were being strictly followed, he assured listeners. Staff were ready. Measures would be “airtight”. It didn’t turn out that way. Soon, the outbreak at Little Mountain Place ...

Reuters Posted at Jan 08 2021 01:46 PM SINGAPORE - Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong received the first shot of a vaccine against COVID-19 on Friday, the 68-year-old said in a Facebook post sharing a video of him being injected in the arm at a local hospital. Singapore has so far only approved Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine but has said it has also secured enough doses for its 5.7 million population including from other vaccine-makers like Moderna and Sinovac. "We got vaccinated early to show Singaporeans we are confident that the vaccine is safe and effective," Lee said, adding that he had been vaccinated alongside the country's top health official, Kenneth Mak. The city-state gave its first jabs at the end of December, but Lee said broader vaccinations of health care workers from public institutions would start on Friday, followed by the elderly next month.

BRASILIA - Brazil has registered more than 200,000 deaths from COVID-19, the Health Ministry said on Thursday, underlining the tragic scale of the outbreak in the country with the world's second highest death toll, as the virus roars back to life. Brazil registered a record 87,843 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, with 1,524 deaths, the ministry said. Since the outbreak began, nearly 8 million people have been infected, while 200,498 have died. The 200,000-death milestone serves as a damning commentary on President Jair Bolsonaro's handling of the outbreak, critics say. It comes after Christmas and New Year celebrations, when many Brazilians met friends and family, while others, including Bolsonaro, flocked to the beach. The vacation period is expected to cause a fresh jump in cases and deaths. Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello said on Thursday that the country is already in a second wave. "In the name of President Jair Bolsonaro, the Health Ministry and all the federa...

Kristine Sabillo, ABS-CBN News Posted at Jan 08 2021 12:05 PM MANILA — The Department of Health on Friday announced that it is now checking if 3 new COVID-19 variants, including the United Kingdom variant, have entered the Philippines. “Sa ngayon, meron na tayong 3 variant na binabantayan. Ito yung sa UK type na variant. Ito yung sa South Africa na variant and there was this identified na variant din dito sa Malaysia,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said during a virtual briefing. (Right now we are monitoring 3 variants. This is the UK type variant, the South Africa variant and the variant identified in Malaysia.) It was previously reported that a new variant was found in Sabah, a territory claimed by both Malaysia and the Philippines. Vergeire said that the more than 300 samples that underwent gene sequencing for the UK variant “were just initial.” The earlier batch of samples did not yield the UK variant or the South Africa variant that is said to affect vacci...

Published January 7, 2021 2:02pm The traveler from the Philippines who has been detected with the new coronavirus variant is a domestic helper in Hong Kong, the Department of Health (DOH) said Thursday. advertisement "Yes, the HK case is a Filipina domestic helper," Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a message to reporters. Health officials in Hong Kong on Tuesday reported that a traveler from the Philippines tested positive for the new coronavirus variant on Tuesday. The DOH later on shared information that the case was a 30-year-old woman from Cagayan Valley. She arrived in Metro Manila on December 18 and underwent quarantine in observance of workplace protocols. On December 19, she took an RT-PCR test for COVID-19, which yielded a negative result. The traveler departed for Hong Kong on December 22 and again underwent quarantine upon arrival. She took another swab test on January 2 and tested positive for the coronavirus variant initially discovered ...

Published January 5, 2021 6:01pm By TED CORDERO, GMA News The Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) is deferring the scheduled hike of its members’ contribution this year. advertisement This is in accordance with President Rodrigo Duterte’s order to forego any increase in members’ premium amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “PhilHealth is one with the President in his effort to ease the burden on many Filipinos being affected by the pandemic,” the state insurer said. “In response to his directive, PhilHealth will still collect premiums from Direct Contributors using the 3% instead of the 3.5% contributions rate; and the P60,000 instead of the P70,000 ceiling in CY 2020,” it added. PhilHealth members were supposed to contribute 3.5% of their monthly wages starting January 2021 from the 3% rate in 2020 to ensure “sufficient funding for the healthcare benefits of its 110 million members as mandated by the UHC Law.” The contribution hike was not received well by the public since ...

Published January 2, 2021 1:01pm By JAMIL SANTOS, GMA News A Filipina staff nurse who served at a house care home in the United Kingdom amid the COVID-19 pandemic received a British Empire Medal at the New Year's honors. Staff Nurse Charito Romano, who worked at the Arbrook House Care Home in Esher, Surrey, England has received the honor, British Ambassador to the Philippines Daniel Pruce announced in a tweet. "Many congratulations to Staff Nurse Charito Romano, from the [Philippines], awarded a British Empire Medal in the #NewYearsHonours for her outstanding work at Arbrook House Care Home in the UK during the #Covid19 pandemic," he said. The British Empire Medal is awarded to meritorious civil or military service worthy of recognition by the Crown. —LBG, GMA News

17 Dec 2020 New York Times The low-wage workers, almost half of whom have contracted the coronavirus, continue to be mostly confined to dormitories even as the city-state eases restrictions. -- On most days, there are zero new coronavirus cases among migrant workers in Singapore, who bore the brunt of the city-state’s outbreak this year. But as the government prepares for its final phase of reopening this month, those workers won’t be part of it. Low-wage migrant laborers, most of them from South Asia, are a crucial part of the Singaporean economy, especially in construction and shipyards. The outbreak among the workers, who make up 93 percent of Singapore’s 58,000 official cases, and the government’s handling of it have renewed longstanding questions about how the country treats foreign workers, and data released by the government this week showed that their infection rate was three times higher than previously reported. On Monday, the Ministry of Health released the results of...

16 Dec 2020 BBC A rights group has said it is "unsurprised" after it was revealed almost half of Singapore's migrant workers have been infected with Covid-19 in the past nine months. New data shows that 152,000 foreign workers - 47% - have been infected. In comparison, it is estimated less than 11% of London's population have been infected since the pandemic began. "There is no justification for Singapore to treat migrant workers like prisoners," Alex Au of the charity Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) told the BBC. "Many have been locked in for eight months." Why did the numbers suddenly jump? The new figure is a combination of the normal PCR coronavirus tests - which check whether a person currently has the virus - and a separate drive of serology tests which trace whether a person has had it in the past. Around 54,500 workers have tested positive in the PCR test while another 98,000 were found via the serology test. The previous number...