|
 The region, an urban sprawl containing the capital, Manila, and 16
cities home to more than 13 million people, had been subject to
strict lockdown measures which were relaxed https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/philippines-duterte-relax-coronavirus-curbs-capital-region-2021-08-19
for 10 days from Aug. 21 to allow more businesses to operate.
"Widespread lockdown or restrictions are no longer effective in the
country," health ministry spokesperson Maria Rosario Vergeire told a
regular news conference on Monday. "It would be more effective if
restrictions were loosened a bit and if lockdowns were more
targeted".
Large numbers of Delta variant cases for which the source could not
be traced had been detected in the capital region and nearby
provinces, the health ministry said in a separate statement.
Authorities have for several weeks attributed the current rise in
cases to the Delta variant, but genome sequencing capacity in the
Philippines is limited, with only a few thousand samples processed
weekly.
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 On Monday, the country's genome
centre said it had detected an additional 466
Delta variant cases, bringing the number of
people confirmed to be carrying the variant to
1,273.
 The Philippines has
recorded a total of 1.86 million COVID-19 cases, the statement said,
a fifth of which were detected over the last 40 days. Nearly 32,000
people in the Philippines have died with COVID-19, according to
official data.
The number of active cases in the country increased to a four-month
high of 130,350, the statement added. Of those recently tested, one
in four tested positive, it said.
(Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales and Enrico Dela Cruz; Editing by
James Pearson)
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