(FILE PHOTO)
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 17) A Department of Health official on Wednesday warned the Philippines COVID-19 cases may increase by 28 times after a month if variants of concern become dominant in the country.
So far, variants of concern have only been detected in less than 6.6% of the samples sequenced by the University of the Philippines-Philippine Genome Center and the UP National Institutes of Health, according to Dr. Alethea de Guzman, medical specialist at the DOH Epidemiology Bureau.
But if these variants are found in all future samples, De Guzman said infections can become 28 times higher than the current number in just a month. She warned such a grim milestone would truly overwhelm our health system.
Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) (Photo from Pup.edu.ph / File photo / MANILA BULLETIN)
This after the Communication Student Council (COC) Student Council received a report from one of its students about an alleged online harassment case involving a professor.
In a statement released Tuesday, March 16, the COC urged the PUP administration to provide adequate and proper training and education to their employees to “prevent any form of sexual harassment and violence which became rampant for the past year, both online and offline, in the the university.”
“It should also be part of the training and hiring system of the university as well. We must never tolerate and turn a blind eye on such spiteful behavior, instead, we must take immediate actions against it,” it underscored.
Supreme Court (SC)
(MANILA BULLETIN)
In a letter to Chief Justice Diosdado M. Peralta and the 14 other justices, Dean Edgardo Carlo Vistan II of the University of the Philippines College of Law cited not only the assaults and killings of lawyers but also their red-tagging.
Vistan also told the SC of the attempt of a police officer to get from a trial court a list of lawyers representing suspected members of the Communist Terror Group (CTG).
Several lawyers’ groups have said that more than 60 lawyers, including prosecutors and judiciary members, have been killed since 2016.
Vistan suggested the creation and convening of a Special Committee to Protect Lawyers which will be headed by a senior SC justice with representatives from the trial courts, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, lawyers’ networks, and the legal academe.
By Marvin Tort
COVID-19 infections in the country are feared to hit a new daily record of about 8,000 cases by the end of March. If this happens, then by the end of this month, we will be worse off than we were a year ago, when the country was first put on community quarantine because of the pandemic. All our efforts and sacrifices, and economic suffering, throughout this time, will have been for naught.
Worse, our healthcare system barely coped when we hit 7,000 daily cases in August 2020. Healthcare workers had to call for a timeout, and the government responded by reimposing stricter quarantine measures for two weeks. But as we hit 8,000 or more, it becomes uncertain if our hospitals can still address all the needs of COVID and non-COVID patients.
Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prizes for 2021 go to four female and six male researchers
Four female and six male researchers are to receive the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize this year, the top award for early career investigators in Germany. This was the result of a decision made by a selection committee appointed by the DFG and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The prizes are each worth €20,000 and will be presented at an award ceremony on 4 May that is to be held virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prizes 2021 go to:
Dr. Julia Borst, Romance Literary Studies, University of Bremen