Daily Covid-19 cases in Philippines soar to highest ever, setting back lockdown efforts, SE Asia News & Top Stories – The Straits Times

MANILA – The Philippines on Friday (March 19) reported its highest-ever daily Covid-19 infections, even as it began to adopt some “circuit breaker” measures to check a record-setting surge fuelled in part by new, more transmissible variants of the coronavirus. The Health Ministry reported 7,103 new cases, surpassing the previous high of 6,958 recorded in August last year when the outbreak peaked as the country was coming out of one of the world’s longest and strictest lockdowns. The Philippines is the second-worst hit country in South-east Asia, after Indonesia, with more than 648,000 cases in total and close to 13,000…