Philippines' COVID-19 infections top 7,000 as country extends lockdown in Manila
25 April, 2020
Philippine Health Ministry on Friday (Apr 24) reported that confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus have increased to more than 7,000.
In a bulletin, the ministry recorded 211 new infections, 15 additional deaths and 40 more recoveries. It brought the full total cases to 7,192, 477 deaths and recoveries to 762.
President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday extended a strict lockdown in the administrative centre Manila until May 15 to attempt to contain coronavirus infections, but will ease restrictions in lower-risk regions.
He also threatened to declare martial law if communist rebels disrupt the flow of relief goods for Filipinos affected by the lockdown, and asked his military to prepare yourself.
Major airlines in the united states said on Friday their domestic and international flights will stay suspended until mid-May following a latest extension of lockdown measures.
Philippine Airlines, Cebu Pacific and the Philippine unit of Malaysia's AirAsia Group said passenger flights, that have been halted in March, will stay suspended. Cargo and special recovery flights will continue, the airlines told Reuters.
Philippines' approach aims to keep overstretched health services from being overwhelmed and create a window to crank up testing, which started slowly to get ground in recent weeks.
But with just 72,000 tests, the federal government last week estimated it had managed to track only a quarter of projected infections. Medical ministry has said it was too early to state if the infection curve have been flattened.
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