A 36-year-old foreigner who arrived in the Philippines from the Middle East is under quarantine after testing positive for the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) virus, health officials said yesterday.
Philippine Secretary of Health Janette Garin said several people the foreigner had come in close contact with have been traced. She said one of them, a Filipino woman exhibiting mild symptoms, had been isolated and that her test results were being awaited.
QUARANTINE
At least seven other people who had close contact with the patient were under home quarantine.
The patient’s home nation was not immediately disclosed.
It is the second confirmed case of MERS in the Philippines. In February, a Filipino nurse tested positive for MERS after arriving home from Saudi Arabia. She was cleared of the virus the same month.
SAUDI ARABIA
In the latest case, the patient arrived in the Philippines on June 19 from Saudi Arabia, but also stayed in Dubai. He left on a second trip while not yet exhibiting any symptoms and came back to the Philippines, said officials, who did not want to disclose where the patient went.
FEVER AND COUGH
The patient developed a fever and cough on Tuesday last week, the Philippine Department of Health said. He sought medical care on Thursday last week and tested positive for the MERS virus on Sunday, when he was transferred to the government’s Research Institute for Tropical Medicine facility.
Garin said about 200 passengers who were on the second flight with him were being traced.
Philippine Department of Health spokesman Lyndon Lee-suy said 19 other close contacts of the foreigner were still being traced.
ISOLATION
Philippine President Benigno Aquino III has tasked the health department to tighten surveillance and quarantine measures at ports of entry and to ensure prompt reporting by all patients who show symptoms of the disease for immediate isolation, treatment and contact tracing, his spokesman Herminio Coloma said.
MERS has killed 33 people in South Korea, where 186 cases have been confirmed, according to the WHO. It is the biggest outbreak outside the Middle East region, where the virus was first seen in 2012 in Saudi Arabia.
Typical symptoms include fever, cough and shortness of breath, and sometimes pneumonia and diarrhea. About 36 percent of reported patients have died, according to WHO.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS