DOH touts 301 recoveries; total cases rise to 26,781

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THE Health Department on Tuesday said 301 more patients have recovered from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), a new high, bringing to 6,552 the total number of patients who have so far recovered from the dreaded disease.

But 364 new cases were also reported yesterday to bring the country’s total to 26,781. Of the newly-reported cases, 249 are considered “fresh cases” while the other 115 are “late cases.”

“Fresh cases” refer to test results that came out and were validated by the DOH – Epidemiology Bureau in the last three days, while “late cases” are those whose laboratory results came out four days ago or more but were just recently validated by the DOH.

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Five more fatalities were recorded yesterday, bringing to 1,103 the total number of COVID-19 deaths in the country.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire attributed the latest record number of recoveries to the improving capacity of the country’s health system.

“This is likely brought about by our deeper knowledge on how to handle COVID-19 patients, as well as improved healthcare system capacity,” Vergeire said.

She also pointed to the help provided by the increasing testing capacity of the country.

“We can now identify the patient earlier, therefore enabling us to begin treatment at an earlier stage,” Vergeire said.

Meanwhile, scientists from Singapore testing a COVID-19 vaccine from US firm Arcturus Therapeutics plan to start human trials in August after promising initial responses in mice.

More than 100 vaccines are being developed globally, including several already in human trials from the likes of AstraZeneca and Pfizer, to try and control a disease that has infected more than 8 million people and killed over 430,000 worldwide.

The vaccine being evaluated by Singapore’s Duke-NUS Medical School works on the relatively-untested Messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, which instructs human cells to make specific coronavirus proteins that produce an immune response.

Scientists at Imperial College London will also start the first clinical trials of a potential COVID-19 vaccine this week with more than 45 million pounds ($56.50 million) in backing from the British government and philanthropic donors.

The trials are the first human tests of a new technology which the researchers say could transform vaccine development by enabling rapid responses to emerging diseases such as the COVID-19 infection caused by the new coronavirus.

Robin Shattock, a professor at Imperial’s department of infectious disease, said that rather than using a part of the virus, as many vaccines do, this potential vaccine uses synthetic strands of the virus’ genetic material – RNA – which are packaged inside tiny fat droplets.

When injected, it instructs muscle cells to produce virus proteins to protect against future infection. In animal tests, the vaccine was shown to be safe and showed “encouraging signs of an effective immune response”, Shattock’s team said in a statement.

About 300 healthy volunteers will receive two doses of the vaccine in the initial human trials to test whether it is safe in people and whether it produces an effective immune response against COVID-19. If it shows promise, larger trials with about 6,000 people would be set up later this year. — With Reuters

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