Philippines logs 15,310 new COVID-19 cases today; Filipinos traveling to the United Kingdom banned
MANILA – The Department of Health today said there were 15,310 new COVID-19 cases which includes 3,709 case backlogs due to technical issues.
In their statement released at 4:00 P.M. today, the DOH said they reported only 6,128 new cases last March 31 due to a system issue.
“After system checks, validation and deduplication were made, 3,709 additional cases were confirmed. All system issues have been resolved and measures were put in place to prevent a repeat of the same.
Today’s total cases includes an additional of 3,709 cases which resulted to 15,310.
However, should one deduct the 3,709 cases, the difference would still be 11,601, still significantly high.
The Department of Health said 434 recovered while 17 perished due to the disease.
The total number of cases reached 771,497 with 153,310 active cases. It was reported 604,368 recovered while 13,320 died.
The same report said individuals tested yesterday reached 35,143 where 20.7 % were found positive but 98.6% were considered mild and asymptomatic.
Meanwhile, the Philippines was included in England’s so-called “red list” together with pakista, Kenya and Bangladesh where all travel is banned.
This will come into effect nest Friday. According to The Guardian, the total number of countries in the “red list” rose to 39 as the government continues to thwart potentially vaccine-resistant variants of COVID-19 from getting into the United Kingdom.
British and Irish nationals and residents may return from red list countries but will be required to undergo compulsory quarantine in hotels.
The ban will begin at 4:00 A.M. on April 9 based on a statement issued today.
“The government has made it consistently clear it will take decisive action if necessary to contain the virus and has added these destinations to the red list to protect public health,” The Guardian quoted the government statement.
Government ministers disregarded the suggestion to widen the list to include European countries such as France and Germany, where a third wave of the infections cause growing concern of the possibility of mutations. (Melo M. Acuña)
