SACRAMENTO — Covered California announced recently that 58,400 people enrolled in health care coverage since the exchange announced a special-enrollment period in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pace of sign-ups has been nearly three times the level that Covered California saw during the same period in 2019. “We want to remind consumers that they can get access to the care they need during this crisis, either through Covered California or Medi-Cal,” said Peter Lee, ...

GMA News pillar and veteran journalist Howie Severino shares his personal experience as a COVID-19 survivor in a special documentary of I-Witness airing this Saturday (April 18) after Tadhana. As someone who is physically active and in good health, Howie, who also serves as GMA Network’s Safety Officer, thought he would be the last person to contract the coronavirus. He was wrong. After a fever of seven days, Howie discovered he had pneumonia. Days later, he would t...

By Philip S. Chua, MD. The international medical community is still examining, observing, and learning about this novelCorona virus, SARS-Cov-2 virus, the cause of COVID-19. Since it is new, the virus, which belongs to the family of Corona viruses, is still posing a great challenge to the scientific world and all peoples around the globe. The first case Since the very first case, a 55-year-old man, infected in Wuhan (the city where a biolab is working on various viru...

By Daniel Llanto A University of the Philippines think thank reported that after a thorough study it found the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) imposed over Metro Manila "very effective" in checking the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Professor Mahar Lagmay of the UP Resilience Institute (UPRI) said the university's Institute of Mathematics submitted research on April 20 showing that the number of new infections per day in the National Capital Regi...

By Jun Nucum After sailing to Southern California early this month, M/V Grand Princess remained docked at Santa Catalina, California and is constantly being monitored by the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles (PCG LA) after leaving San Francisco.   Asked for developments on the cruise ship and the 91 Filipino crewmembers who were left behind, the LA Consulate announced that the PCG LA and the Philippine Embassy in Washington, D.C. are in coordination with the m...

By Corina Oliquino MANILA – Japan-based investment bank Nomura said the Philippines is “unlikely to slip into an exchange rate crisis anytime soon” as the coronavirus pandemic triggers global recession fears, battering financial markets worldwide. Despite its positive assessment, Nomura warned the country could be the next coronavirus hotspot among emerging market (EM) economies and could put the peso at risk. Nomura said monetary authorities of at-risk countries may...

By Macon Araneta The Philippines, in a best-case scenario, will likely lose some $4.5 billion (PHP228 billion) in cash remittance inflows from migrant Filipino workers this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ACTS-OFW Coalition of Organizations said. “Without the pandemic, we expected the aggregate incoming cash transfers from Filipinos overseas to grow by $1.5 billion (or by five percent) this year,” said ACTS-OFW Chairman Aniceto Bertiz III. “However, on accoun...