More Filipino frontliners in the United Kingdom are being infected by Covid 19, the Department of Labor and Employment reported on Wednesday.
In a report to Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III, the Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) in London said at least 26 new cases were recorded among nurses and health care workers in the last two days, bringing the total of stricken nurses to 776.
The fresh cases of infection is part of the spiked Covid cases in the UK at 53,135 with 414 deaths from the previous day’s 41,385 and 357 casualties, Labor Attaché Amy Reyes said.
Reyes said the 25 infected Filipino nurses and a health care worker are now on isolation, and are being given assistance. She added that nine of those infected were deployed in UK only this year while the rest had been working in Britain since 2019.
She however did not say whether the infection is the new strain of the virus, adding only that UK’s National Health Services (NHS) hospitals are “under extreme pressure due to the surge of the cases.”
In her report, Reyes also said that two other nurses who were previously infected had recovered for a total of 614 recoveries, while 36 had died. Two other Filipinos, one a healthcare worker, are in critical condition. Both have been long-time UK residents, she added.
“We are sad to note that the new wave of infection in the UK involves more of our frontline Filipino workers,” Bello said.
In a separate report to Bello, Labor Attaché Saul de Vries of POLO Singapore said the city state recorded 405 COVID cases among Filipinos, with two new cases involving newly arrived OFWs.
De Vries said Singapore was to commence vaccination on Wednesday with healthcare workers the first to be inoculated to address the state’s 58,542 Covid cases.
Other foreign posts of the labor department in Europe and Canada also recorded spikes in Covid cases.
In Canada, for instance, the POLO in Vancouver reported that the UK covid 19 variant “is now in four parts of Canada, including British Columbia and Alberta.”