More news about how the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines is being handled by the public and the government.
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| https://www.newswise.com/articles/long-term-study-of-covid-lockdown-and-family-life-shows-unexpected-lasting-effects-on-fatherhood/ |
In the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, much has been said about how the lockdowns created conditions for dual-parent families to spend more time at home with their children. In an ideal vision of family life, this would have led to parents sharing in quality time and caregiving responsibilities, and bonding with their children in a way they hadn’t been able to do before.
In the United States, ample attention was given to the novelty of how dads, in particular, were getting much more time to participate in the daily, often mundane and yet intimate tasks of child-rearing. Many people hoped that the change would persist, allowing dads more time and flexibility in the long term — ultimately reshaping how we view fatherhood in general.
However, according to new research from anthropologist and fatherhood expert Lee Gettler of the University of Notre Dame, those fathering benefits have not outlasted the pandemic itself.
“COVID didn’t really lead to a large-scale uptick in this new vision for fathering on the part of dads across the board,” said Gettler, the Rev. John A. O’Brien College Professor of Anthropology and chair of the Department of Anthropology, as well as an affiliated faculty at the Eck Institute for Global Health and the William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families.
“I think what’s been missing from many of those initial reports was a wider perspective on what the realities are for families and fathers in the United States and around the world following the pandemic,” he said, “especially as we think about common jobs for men, precarity in the workplace and economic inequality.”
To address those gaps in understanding, Gettler and his team, which included co-author and postdoctoral research associate Sarah Hoegler Dennis, relied on 15 years of longitudinal data to compare fathers’ pre-COVID to post-COVID behaviors. The researchers looked at this data from a non-Euro-American perspective in a major metropolitan area in the Philippines.
What they found was that fathering behaviors, for the most part, did not change much before COVID began versus shortly after the pandemic ended.
“There was this idea out there that a meaningful percentage of dads were spending more time with their kids during the lockdown periods, even if they were still working, and that the dynamics of COVID would lead to this long-term effect on what and how much dads were doing within their families,” Gettler said. “And we just didn’t see that prevailing change.”
The research team drew on a large sample of men who were around 25 years old at the start of the study and followed them for the next 15 years as part of a larger set of research in Cebu, Philippines. Gettler and his team have been studying fathering and the “biology of fatherhood” as part of this project for close to 20 years, and have found that fathers in Cebu have become much more involved in the past few decades, mirroring father involvement in the United States.
During the pandemic, the Philippines also had one of the longest lockdown periods in the world, according to Gettler, with some of the most strict, government-mandated quarantine guidelines in place, making this an appropriate site to test for the effects of the stay-at-home orders on fathering.
The researchers used waves of socio-demographic and fathers’ caregiving data collected prior to the pandemic (2009 and 2014) and after the pandemic (2022-23). The main analyses focused on caregiving changes over time for fathers who had young children at home both pre- and post-pandemic, looking at how involved they were with routine, hands-on care for babies and young children, recreational play and activities, and educational caregiving tasks.
“What we found is that COVID — and the time dads spent at home with their children during that period — did not change fathering in any lasting way,” Gettler said. “As soon as life gets back to normal, we see that dads are continuing to do the same thing they were doing before COVID.”
With one exception, Gettler noted.
For the group of fathers who found themselves going from employed to either unemployed or underemployed because of the pandemic, their involvement with their children’s educational care shot up noticeably, and the change persisted.
“We see this link with employment status and fathers’ ability to spend more time helping kids with school work and homework,” Gettler said. “But that’s the only hint that the conditions surrounding COVID may have contributed to some sort of change in what dads are doing at home.”
At the end of the day, dad’s employment status is the primary predictor for how much care he is providing, Gettler said. He believes that policy changes within the workplace — such as paid paternity leave and widespread flexibility on working from home or setting working hours — might lead to a more lasting change in fatherhood behavior. These structural changes could support permanent shifts in expectations and norms for men as caregivers, and open up more opportunities for dads to get — and stay — involved.
Gettler argued that society needs to recognize how it can better support dads and give them the chance to be more available at home, without the caveat of having to become unemployed or underemployed in order to enjoy such chances to be with their families.
“There are questions remaining about how we can continue to encourage dads in dual-parent families to pull their weight, be a supportive partner or to balance the responsibilities of what it takes to run a household and take care of young children,” Gettler said. “COVID exposed or habituated more dads to what that can look like, but now we need to enable them to continue that behavior.”
Gettler, who is also director of the Hormones, Health, and Human Behavior Lab, works with collaborators at multiple global sites and is an expert on fatherhood and healthy families, including the psychobiology of motherhood and fatherhood and parents’ physical and mental health, as well as child growth, development and physiology. Presently, Gettler works on research projects related to these interests in the United States, the Philippines and the Republic of the Congo.
The pandemic changed the way the Philippines works and now many AI gadgets are available to assist in that change.
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| https://www.gmanetwork.com/lifestyle/news/132771/new-office-gadgets-offer-ai-driven-tech/story |
As the world moves forward with hybrid work, office gadgets are forced to adapt to change.
The pandemic has drastically changed the way the world works. Deliveries are part of daily life, there's a boom in online jobs, and offices have adopted hybrid work systems.
As working from home is now more commonplace, software and hardware products are offering solutions that make home and office setups better.
For Jabra, a tech company known for its headsets and video technology, its products have also evolved from simple audio and video solutions to artificial intelligence-driven products.
“For the past years, the way we work has fundamentally changed. Hybrid work is no longer a trend, it's the reality for many organizations here in the Philippines. The cons are taking calls from busy offices, from the comforts of their home or from a coffee shop or everywhere in between. At the same time, customers' expectations have gone up, every interaction is expected to be clear and of course we all know during calls there are a lot of disturbances,” explained Larsen Sandoval, country head of Enterprise Philippines, Jabra.
“Our mission is simple but judicious, to help people hear more, do more, and be more. For us in Enterprise, that means designing professional audio and video solutions that are not only technologically advanced but also deeply human,” he added during the launch of its latest products.
The company recently launched the Evolve3 headset and PanCast Room Kit.
The new headset has a more sleek design and the mouthpiece is noticeably absent. The brand wants its users to utilize the product while working and can be simply used as headphones for listening to music and other entertainment.
It is powered by deep neural network (DNN) technology delivering a promise of clear calls even in noisy environments. The headset's Adaptive Active Noise Cancellation adjusts in real time and helps reduce background distractions.
It has two variants, the 85 (over-the-ear) and 75 (on-the-ear). It also boasts of 37 hours of battery use. Price starts at P40,725 for the 85 variant and P32,229 for the 75 variant.
On the other hand, the PanCast Room Kit is an audio and video solution for office meeting rooms.The kit is composed of the 55 VBS video bar that has audio and multi-camera configurations; the SpeakerMic, an extension microphone that can be placed on the table; and expandable camera and intelligent speaker tracking.It uses an AI-driven multi-camera system powered by Huddly Crew. The SpeakerMic picks up voices from any part of the meeting room for clearer audio.
The new kit will be available in Q2 of 2026.
I think this is an advertisement disguised as a news article.
Tourism is still recovering. Air China has opened a new gateway to Manila from Chongqing.
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| https://bilyonaryo.com/2026/05/03/air-china-opens-new-gateway-to-manila-from-chongqing/travel/ |
A new chapter in Philippine–China travel connectivity took flight this weekend as Air China launched its first direct service between Chongqing and Manila.
The inaugural CKG–MNL flight, carrying more than 150 passengers, landed shortly after midnight on May 2 at Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
The arrival was welcomed with a reception organized by the Department of Tourism, which described the new route as a strategic step toward restoring visitor flows from China.
Just over an hour later, the same aircraft departed Manila for Chongqing with 145 passengers on board.
Chongqing, one of China’s largest cities and a major outbound travel hub, is expected to generate a steady stream of leisure travelers to the Philippines.
The government recently reinstated visa-free entry for Chinese nationals arriving through key gateways such as Manila and Cebu, allowing stays of up to 14 days.
Air China also operates direct flights to Manila from other major Chinese cities, including Chengdu and Beijing, strengthening its role in reconnecting the two countries.
In the first quarter of 2026 alone, the airline mounted more than 100 direct flights to the Philippines, offering tens of thousands of seats.
Before the pandemic, China was among the Philippines’ top sources of international visitors. While arrivals have yet to fully recover, recent e-travel data shows more than 150,000 Chinese visitors recorded by end-April this year—an encouraging sign of gradual rebound.
However, with the recent worldwide fuel crisis those number might not recover for a while.
The World Bank has granted the Philippines $18.85 million to battle pandemics.
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| https://mb.com.ph/2026/05/04/world-bank-backs-philippines-pandemic-fight-with-1885-million-grant |
The World Bank has approved an $18.85-million grant to strengthen the Philippines’ pandemic response, as the country is considered a global hotspot for emerging infectious and zoonotic diseases.
The Washington-based multilateral lender’s board approved last April 29 the investment project financing (IPF) for the Pandemic Fund-Resilient Philippines Project, which aims to improve the country’s capacity to detect, report, and respond to existing and emerging pathogens with epidemic potential among humans, animals, and wildlife, documents showed.
The project will be jointly implemented by the departments of Agriculture (DA) and of Health (DOH), as well as the DA’s Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI).
The grant will be sourced from the Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response Trust Fund (Pandemic Fund), which was established in 2022.
The World Bank said the project has three components focused on human health, animal health, and overall implementation support.
The human health component aims to strengthen early warning and disease surveillance systems, improve laboratory capacity and diagnostics, and build a more resilient health workforce through training and regulatory support, the World Bank said.
Meanwhile, the animal health component enhances surveillance, information systems, and laboratory capabilities while building local government capacity, with the final component covering project management, monitoring, and evaluation, it added.
The World Bank noted in documents published last year that the Philippines is considered a global hotspot for emerging infectious and zoonotic diseases due to its rich biodiversity and factors such as habitat loss, urbanization, and illegal wildlife trade, which heighten the risk of disease spillover.
The lender also cited that the country has faced repeated outbreaks, including avian influenza or bird flu and African swine fever (ASF), alongside growing threats like antimicrobial resistance that complicate disease control and increase economic and health burdens.
While a 2024 World Health Organization (WHO) evaluation noted improvements in Philippine surveillance, laboratory capacity, and emergency response systems, gaps remain in workforce size and specialized skills needed for pandemic preparedness, it pointed out.
According to the World Bank, despite improvements in preventing, detecting, and controlling public health threats, gaps persist due to fragmented surveillance systems, limited local capacity, manual processes, and weaknesses in laboratory standards, diagnostics access, and workforce readiness.
The animal health sector faces similar constraints, with largely reactive surveillance, coordination challenges in a devolved system, and limited resources and integration needed for timely detection and rapid response to disease outbreaks, according to the World Bank.
"The Philippines is considered a global hotspot for emerging infectious and zoonotic diseases." So this grant is mostly for non-human diseases.
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