COVID-19 death toll tops 5,000

CCPO director, Police Colonel Josefino Ligan, has made up the plan after they found a pattern in the flow of illegal drugs which uses delivery services in disposing the items.

Intercepted illegal drugs that were confiscated from several high-value individuals believed to have been transported from other places in country.

Investigation further revealed that the problem with communication of illegal drug activity is still being linked to persons inside the jail.

“We will be meeting with delivery services to make them aware together with PDEA-7 so just to inform the management of this delivery services nga di sila magamit sa sindikato,” said Ligan.

Recently, the CCPO intelligence unit was able to arrest three high-value individuals (HVI) who were said to be new member of the group of alleged druglord Rustico Ygot.

Ligan said that they are suspecting the group has been expanding their network which could be a result of the transactions of the said illegal drug contacts that were traced inside the jails either in Cebu City or in Muntinlupa City.

Ligan said he will ask for the help and coordination of BuCor Director-General Gerald Bantag who is his classmate in Philippine National Police Academy.

“I’ll be coordinating with him (Bantag) para ang communication flow aning Ygot kung unsa man ang gamit niya maputol,” said Ligan.

MANILA — The coronavirus crisis in the Philippines has claimed more than 5,000 lives as the country’s caseload rose to over 291,000, the Department of Health reported Tuesday.

The DOH registered 50 new deaths, pushing the toll to 5,049. Of the new deaths, 20 came from virus epicenter Metro Manila, 10 from Western Visayas and eight from Calabarzon.

A bulk of the newly-reported deaths happened in September, while eight occurred in August, three in July and one in April.

The Philippines recorded the second highest number of COVID-19 deaths in Southeast Asia behind Indonesia with 9,677 deaths as of Monday.

Health authorities reported the country’s first fatality related to COVID-19—a 44-year-old Chinese man—on February 2. The tourist was also the first known fatality outside China.

COVID-19 cases in the Philippines increased to 291,789 after 1,635 more people got infected—the lowest in about two weeks. The DOH said only nine testing laboratories were not able to submit their data to the agency.

Nearly 88% of the additional cases occurred in the last 14 days.

Metro Manila reported the highest number of new infections with 583, followed by Cavite with 102, Iloilo with 97, Rizal with 67 and Cebu with 57.

The DOH also logged 450 additional recoveries, bringing the total number of recovered patients to 230,643.

Active cases stood at 56,097 Tuesday. Of the figure, 86.4% were mild, 9.2% were asymptomatic, 1.3% were severe and 3.1% were critical.

More than 3.22 million people have been tested for the disease.

In a speech Monday evening, President Rodrigo Duterte said the only things that people can do is “wear a face mask and that’s it and wait for the vaccine.”

Globally, the novel coronavirus has infected more than 31.2 million individuals, with over 963,000 deaths since it emerged in China late last year.