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MANILA, Philippines – President Rodrigo Duterte says he has extended a state of calamity across the Philippines for a year to allow the government to extract emergency funds faster to combat the Covid-19 pandemic and leverage the police and military to maintain law and order.
Duterte first put the country into a state of calamity in March, when the number of confirmed infections was approaching 200 with about a dozen deaths. The country now has more than 290,000 confirmed cases, the highest in Southeast Asia, with nearly 5,000 deaths.
The harsh-speaking president again lashed out at critics in his televised remarks Monday night for accusing his administration of not doing enough to contain the outbreaks.
“What ‘enough’ do you want? There are hospitals, beds and funeral homes. Everything is there, ”said Duterte, specifying in his diatribe Vice President Leni Robredo, who leads the opposition.
“You know Leni, if you want, if you really want to end Covid, let’s spray the Philippines or Manila with pesticides to kill them all … The only thing we can do, really, is wear a mask, wear a mask, and that’s it and wait for the vaccine, ”Duterte said in his hometown in South Davao City.
The state of calamity in force until September 2021 will be used mainly to withdraw emergency funds quickly anywhere in the country. Officials can also control the prices of staples like rice and cooking oil in a state of calamity like that.
Quarantine restrictions, such as social distancing, remain as they are now.
Duterte also said that the ban on the deployment of Filipino nurses, doctors and other health workers with finalized employment contracts abroad has been lifted. Those without signed contracts are barred from leaving the country to ensure an adequate supply of medical workers amid continued outbreaks.
The Philippines is a leading source of the world’s workforce, including medical personnel.
In other developments in the Asia Pacific region:
India registered more than 75,000 new cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours. The Health Ministry also reported 1,053 deaths on Tuesday, bringing the total deaths to 88,935. New infections a day hover around 90,000 for days, but the evidence varies widely, and new surges are occurring in previously relatively unscathed states. The most pronounced recent increase has been in the central state of Chhattisgarh, where nearly half of the population is poor and the health system is very fragile. The cases have risen from around 33,000 at the beginning of the month to more than 86,000 now. A week-long shutdown of 10 districts in the state was announced Monday. Infections were also increasing dramatically in the Himalayan states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, along with the agrarian state of Punjab.
South Korea has added 61 additional cases of coronavirus, its lowest daily virus count since mid-August amid a downward trend in new infections. Korea’s Disease Prevention and Control Agency said Tuesday that the additional figures bring the country’s total to 23,106 with 388 deaths. It is the third day in a row that South Korea’s daily virus count has remained below 100. South Korea had seen an increase in new infections, mainly in the Seoul metropolitan area, since the beginning of last month, before their caseload recently began to decline under strict physical distancing. rules.
