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://mb.com.ph/2026/08/22/baguio-records-125-mild-covid19-cases-no-deaths |
The City Health Services Office (CHSO) reported that Baguio has recorded 125 COVID‑19 cases as of Aug. 17, with 120 patients having recovered and five active cases, all classified as mild.
The update was presented during the Baguio City Council’s regular session, where representatives from the CHSO, Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center (BGHMC), and the Department of Health (DOH) were invited to brief officials on the city’s COVID‑19 situation.
CHSO Head Celia Brillantes and City Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit (CESU) head Donnabel Panes said most of the city’s cases were mild, noting that the majority of patients had been vaccinated.
Panes added that 99 percent of recovered patients were vaccinated, underscoring the role of vaccination in preventing severe illness.
A significant number of cases were recorded among health workers who undergo regular testing as part of infection prevention and control measures in medical facilities, the CHSO explained.
Health officials also reported that Baguio has not recorded any case of the Cicada COVID‑19 subvariant.
Across the Cordillera Administrative Region, the DOH logged 184 COVID‑19 cases from January to August 2026.
Baguio accounted for 129 cases, followed by Benguet with 39, Mountain Province with seven, Kalinga with four, Apayao and Ifugao with two each, and Abra with one.
While Baguio’s cases have generally been mild, officials urged the public to remain cautious, especially when interacting with senior citizens, children, pregnant women, and individuals with comorbidities.
They pointed to the city’s vaccination data as evidence of the protection vaccines provide against severe COVID‑19 outcomes.
Oddly enough the number of reported cases in the article, 129, is not the same as the humber in the headline, 125.
During the pandemic most people stayed home. Jeff Ramos decided to volunteer in his community.
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| https://cebudailynews.inquirer.net/759823/faces-of-cebu-jeff-ramos-emerging-host-young-volunteer/amp |
For Jeff Ramos, serving the community holds no status.
For the 24-year-old from Barangay Guadalupe, Cebu City, service is not measured by the position attached to a name, the number of people under a leader, or the recognition that may come afterward.
It is measured by the willingness to help.
Jeff Ramos, also known as “Jepay,” first found his way into volunteerism during the pandemic, when the crisis had placed communities in difficult circumstances and people were looking for ways to lend a hand.
Volunteerism had never been part of his original plans.
But in 2020, friends encouraged him to join the Youth Volunteers in Guadalupe, which was then looking for people willing to help their community.
The group was open to anyone who wanted to lend a helping hand, and Ramos decided to join.
He was also the kind of person who found it difficult to simply stay at home doing nothing.
“I couldn’t just stay at home and do nothing. Ganahan jud ko nga ma-productive ko by volunteering and lending my helping hands to my community. Mao ‘to nakahuna-huna ko nga mo-join ko ug volunteer,” Ramos said.
The work placed him among hundreds of volunteers serving a barangay he described as having a large population spread across 84 sitios.
They distributed quarantine passes and rice, while also taking precautions because of their exposure as volunteers during the height of the pandemic.
The work was demanding, but Ramos remembers how the volunteers managed it through hard work and unity.
“With all hard work and unity as a team, nalabang ra gyud ’to namo siya,” he said.
Ramos’ entry into volunteerism came years after he had first encountered leadership in school.
Leadership, he said, can either be something a person is born with or something shaped by influence and experience.
His own journey started modestly.
In elementary school, he recalled leading Grade 1 pupils during the flag ceremony in Grade 6. His junior high school years were largely spent in lower-level classroom positions, including roles such as an auditor.
It was in Senior High School at Abellana National School that his exposure to leadership became more substantial.
In Grade 11, he became a Board of Director. By the following school year, his peers considered him among those fit to run for the Supreme Student Government (SSG) president.
He eventually decided to run and became SSG President for the 2019-2020 school year.
The experience gave him opportunities to attend leadership training and learn from his adviser and fellow officers.
Among the lessons that stayed with him was the importance of putting others first.
“During my SSG years, my SSG adviser really taught me to be selfless. You need to think of the welfare of others first before sa imoha,” Ramos said.
He also learned that leadership begins with strengthening oneself before trying to empower others.
“Be yourself. Para dili ka mag-lisod to lead others, you need to be yourself and you also need to build strength gikan jud sa imong kaugalingon para maka-empower sad ka sa others. Empower yourself first, before empowering others,” he said.
Those lessons would later become part of how he approached volunteer work.
For Ramos, moving from lower positions in school to becoming an SSG president never meant that one role automatically allowed him to serve more people than another.
The number of people a person can serve, he believes, should not determine the value of the service itself.
“If you really want to serve, then bisag pila pa man na ka-population or unsa pa man na kagamay or kadako ang population, dili siya mag-matter,” he said.
“As they all say, with great power comes great responsibility. So if you can serve anyone and everyone, why not, ’di ba?”
That belief also extends to the people he serves.
Ramos said he does not believe service should be limited by political affiliations, personal beliefs, or other differences between people.
For him, the decision to help comes down to whether someone needs help and whether he has something he can offer.
“Knowing the fact nga ang service, naa na gyud sa akong heart. So bisan pa man ug lahi mi ug political party or lahi-lahi mi ug belief, lahi-lahi mi ug religion, service holds no status,” he said.
If a person or group needs help and he knows he can contribute, Ramos said, that is enough reason to extend it.
After the pandemic, Ramos became more closely involved with activities of the Sangguniang Kabataan in Guadalupe.
During the 2018-2023 term, although he did not hold a formal seat at the council, he experienced serving as vice chairman of different committees over the five-year period.
His first committee responsibility was Peace Building and Security.
From there came a series of community activities, including a fun run aimed at veering away the youth from illegal drugs, “Queen of Guadalupe,” “Operation Tuli,” “Skwela Karon, Trabaho Dayon,” and “Guadalupe Eco Ambassador and Ambassadress,” among others.
The work remained focused on the community, particularly the youth of Guadalupe.
“Para sa community jud siya, especially for the kabatan-unan sa Brgy. Guadalupe,” Ramos said.
His involvement did not depend on holding an official position.
For one recent SK activity, the opening of the Asenzo Cup and the Drag Queen competition, Ramos was not originally part of the staff. He was appointed by an SK chairperson to serve as floor director.
For Ramos, the role itself mattered less than the trust placed in him to carry out the responsibility.
Regardless of whether he was officially part of the original staff, he said he was willing to take on the work if he was considered fit for it.
That willingness is also reflected in how he understands volunteerism within the barangay.
Even behind the scenes, without a formal position, he still considers the work volunteerism when it is done to help the community without expecting something in return.
For Ramos, volunteerism has never been about receiving something in exchange.
During the pandemic, he and the other volunteers did not expect compensation for their work.
Instead, fulfillment came from the people they helped.
Sometimes, it was as simple as a “thank you.”
Sometimes, it was seeing someone smile after receiving assistance.
“Siguro ang sense of fulfillment nga amoang ma-receive kay gikan gyud sa mga tao nga among gitabangan, like a simple ‘thank you’ as a gesture, mo-smile sila nga matagaan sila ug ayuda,” he said.
That same sense of fulfillment continues even in activities that are no longer centered on emergency assistance.
During the Asenzo Cup, where he helped organize the opening and games, Ramos found satisfaction in seeing young people enjoy the activity the team had planned.
For him, that reaction was a sign that the work had achieved its purpose.
“Just by looking at the youth who enjoy playing a specific sport, murag it’s a fulfillment na sad sa amoang part,” he said.
“The youth enjoyed the activity that we planned, we organized.”
It is that kind of response that makes him want to continue serving, particularly the youth of the barangay.
Volunteerism, however, has also taught Ramos that serving a community means working with people who do not always see things the same way.
He considers dealing with different perspectives one of the hardest parts of volunteer work.
Volunteers sometimes have to relay instructions from leaders to residents who may have their own beliefs, principles, and reasons for disagreeing.
During the pandemic, one example involved quarantine passes.
The volunteers were instructed that one quarantine pass should be shared by at least five houses so that people would not all have to leave their homes at the same time.
Some residents initially resisted because they also had their own needs to attend to outside.
Ramos said the challenge was addressed through communication and explaining why the instruction was necessary.
The goal, he said, was to help residents understand that everyone needed to work together during difficult circumstances for the betterment of the community.
For him, remaining committed to the purpose of service becomes especially important when perspectives differ.
Ramos’ service also extends beyond organizing community activities.
He began hosting at 18 after someone believed in him and gave him the opportunity to handle an event.
Since then, hosting has become another skill he can bring into volunteer work.
He is part of a group of friends who volunteer and organize feeding programs in different communities, including parts of Cebu and Guadalupe.
In one recent feeding program in Barangay Bonbon, a mountain barangay in Cebu City, he used his hosting skills to help run the activity, introduce his fellow volunteers, hold the microphone, and interact with the children.
For Ramos, the connection is straightforward.
He found a way to use something he loves doing in service of something he also loves.
“With that, na-connect nako akong love sa hosting sa akoang love sa service,” he said.
Ramos does not believe a person needs a particular position, skill, or qualification to become a volunteer.
For him, there is one thing that matters most: the willingness to serve.
He said volunteerism should not be treated as a path to popularity. A person should understand that they are there because the community needs them and because they have a purpose in helping others.
“Siguro, dapat naa ang heart to serve, mao ra gyud na,” Ramos said.
“Hopefully, ma-realize nimo na you are there to help others. You are there because the community needs you and you are there for a purpose.”
That principle also explains why he rejects the idea of using leadership or volunteerism to demand recognition.
For Ramos, genuine service should not come with an expectation that people will repay the volunteer with money, recognition, or a sense of indebtedness.
“A true leader and a true volunteer will help without demanding any recognition or any kind of pag-tingala sa imoha,” Ramos said.
Fresh from graduating cum laude from the University of Cebu with a Bachelor of Arts in English Language, Ramos plans to pursue teaching.
He wants to review for the licensure examination, but he also plans to work first to help with his family’s needs and save enough money to send himself to a review center.
For now, he continues to work as a freelance host while preparing to enter the workforce.
He can already picture what he hopes comes next: himself inside a classroom, sharing knowledge with his future students.
“I can really see myself in a four-walled classroom, kanang nag-impart ko ug knowledge to my students,” he said.
“Siguro mao na siya ang abangan sa usa ka Jepay.”
For Ramos, however, whatever comes next remains connected to the same principle that has carried him from a student leader to a pandemic volunteer, from community activities to behind-the-scenes work, and from a microphone in his hand to service in his barangay.
Service holds no status.
A title may change, a position may end. Even the number of people one serves may grow or shrink.
But for Ramos, the purpose remains the same: if someone needs help, and he knows he can help, he chooses to serve.
As a seemingly principled man seeking no recognition he is certainly an anomaly.
Here is another story of pandemic resilience. JM Banquicio’s channel began during the pandemic when, after months of being grounded, he documented a restricted trip to the reopening of Boracay simply because he missed traveling.
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| https://www.manilatimes.net/2026/08/23/the-sunday-times/filipino-champions/getting-to-know-jm-banquicio/2410349 |
JM Banquicio loved his corporate life. He had a good company, supportive bosses and great colleagues, and travel was something he carried alongside it, a passion that lived beside a career that was working. Leaving, when the time came in 2024, was not easy.
“Deciding to leave wasn’t easy at all,” he says.
But something had shifted, and he took the leap into full-time content creation.
The story of his channel began earlier, in the middle of the pandemic, when Boracay announced it was reopening with restrictions. JM had spent months grounded, missing travel the way people miss something that is part of who they are.
“I still needed to take a Covid-19 test back then before I could fly,” he recalls.
He got tested, prepared all the requirements and went, not because of a content strategy but because he genuinely missed traveling. And he figured that if others wanted to go, they might need to see the whole process.
“I thought of documenting the whole process since, if I was going to upload it online, many people who also wanted to travel to Boracay at the time might be able to relate to it.”
That instinct, to show the practical side of a trip so someone else can find their way through it, became the foundation of everything he does.
Today, his YouTube channel has more than 220,000 subscribers and 68 million views. He covers travel, food and lifestyle across Asia and beyond, breaking down itineraries, costs and logistics with the specificity of someone who has had to figure it all out himself.
Viewers follow his trips in detail, and some take the exact same ones.
“It’s also heartwarming to receive messages from the fam saying they followed my itinerary or watched my vlog before taking their trip,” he says.
Fam is what he calls his audience, and the name fits.
He is, by his own admission, naturally an introvert. Putting himself out there, meeting people and speaking in front of others did not come easily at first.
“Vlogging pushed me outside my comfort zone and gave me confidence I probably wouldn’t have developed otherwise,” he says.
The camera, it turns out, was its own kind of discipline.
The videos that mean the most to him are not always about the biggest destinations. They are the ones with his family: traveling to Japan together, bringing his parents to China and celebrating milestones as a whole unit.
“The first time traveling in Europe, visiting Christmas markets, and many more, but some of the videos that stay closest to me are really the ones with my family,” he says.
He documents family life openly because family is genuinely central to who he is, and the channel has always reflected that. But he is also conscious of limits. Not everything becomes content. Some moments belong only to them.
“Years from now, regardless of what happens to social media, we will have this archive of our family,” he says.
The scale of the platform only becomes real to him in person. At his first Bloggers United event, he was caught off guard by how many people showed up. At airports and malls, strangers stop him to say they watched his vlog with their family before booking a trip.
“There are actual people and families behind every view on YouTube,” he says.
“Knowing that someone with their family gave 30 or 40 minutes of their day to watch my videos is something I never want to take for granted.”
Behind what viewers see is work that is far less glamorous: research, planning, filming while still trying to actually experience the place, then transferring files and charging equipment late at night while others are already resting.
“There’s so much more happening behind the scenes than what viewers see,” he says.
He has learned to tell the difference between a day that needs rest and a day that needs showing up, and he no longer apologizes for either.
I also asked JM about the online discussions that exist beyond his channel, including a subreddit dedicated to him and questions that have circulated about his health. He is aware of both.
“As a content creator, I understand that putting myself and parts of my life online naturally opens me up to different opinions, both positive and negative,” he says.
He pays attention to feedback he can actually learn from. The rest, he tries not to carry.
On his health, he is direct: Yes, he takes care of it. Regular checkups, mindful choices and ongoing work.
“What appears on camera is only a small portion of my everyday life,” he says.
When things online become heavy, his family keeps him grounded. So do the messages from viewers.
One has stayed with him: Someone wrote to say they were going through a very difficult and lonely time and that his vlogs gave them something to look forward to.
“It could be a simple travel vlog, a family trip, or just an ordinary day for me,” he reflects, “but on the other side of the screen, someone might be watching because they need a little escape, comfort, or simply something that can make their day feel lighter.”
That message, he says, became one of his whys.
Last year, he received the No. 1 award at the World Creator Festival in Busan. Being recognized abroad, surrounded by creators from different places, made him proud not just personally but also as a Filipino creator.
“Filipino creators have stories and perspectives that deserve to be seen globally,” he says. “So whenever I’m given an opportunity like that, I carry a sense of pride that I’m representing where I come from.”
Then he came home, picked up his camera and kept going.
Ask him what he wants viewers to feel after watching one of his videos, and he does not reach for something grand.
“I want them to feel like they’re really with me in every vlog,” he says.
He wants them excited to book the same trip or curious about a place in the Philippines they had never considered. And for those who cannot travel right now, he wants the video to give them 20 or 30 minutes where they can breathe, laugh and feel like they are part of something.
“If someone closes one of my videos feeling a little happier, more inspired, or less alone,” he says, “that’s already something I’m very grateful for.”
A corporate life set aside, a camera picked up, millions of minutes of someone else’s day given freely and watched. JM Banquicio made a bet on himself and on the fam waiting on the other side of the screen. So far, both are showing up.
The pandemic both forced the pause that made him start creating and shaped the useful, grounded approach that later allowed him to turn it into a career. It was a net benefit for him as for so many others.
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| https://www.nomadlawyer.org/philippines-cruise-tourism-manila-homeport-growth-passenger-volume-2026 |
Data from the Eva Macapagal Cruise Terminal indicates a significant acceleration in "turnaround" activity. As of April 2026, Manila recorded six turnaround cruise calls, a threefold increase over the two calls recorded during the previous year.
A turnaround call signifies that passengers both embark and disembark at the same location. This transition allows Manila to function as a starting and ending point for voyages rather than a transit stop, increasing the economic impact per passenger.
The terminal is currently equipped to handle medium and large vessels with capacities ranging from 1,000 to 3,000 passengers, primarily serving markets from the United States, Europe, and China.
Official figures from the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) demonstrate a consistent upward trajectory in arrival numbers over the last three years:
- 2023: 88,080 cruise passengers
- 2024: 150,903 cruise passengers
- 2025: 226,247 cruise passengers
The 2025 figures represent a critical milestone, exceeding the 213,765 passengers recorded in 2019. While PPA national data for March and April 2026 is currently undergoing validation, early indicators suggest this growth trend is persisting.
The growth in cruise tourism is decentralizing, moving beyond the capital to distribute visitor traffic across the archipelago.
Active Regional Hubs: PPA-managed ports currently receiving regular cruise traffic include:
- Coron
- Puerto Princesa
- Currimao
- Salomague
Planned Development Zones: Further cruise-port infrastructure projects are advancing in the following locations:
- Coron (Palawan)
- Alegria (Buruanga, Aklan)
- Catagbacan (Loon, Bohol)
- Balbagon (Mambajao, Camiguin)
To support this influx, the PPA is implementing facility upgrades including covered walkways, improved gangways, and modernized restrooms. Sustainability initiatives are also being integrated, specifically the introduction of solar lighting and electric-powered port equipment.
The evolution of the Philippines from a "port of call" to a "homeport" destination is a strategic pivot that reduces reliance on foreign hubs like Singapore or Hong Kong. By increasing turnaround calls, the Philippines captures a higher share of the "pre- and post-cruise" spend, including hotel stays and local retail.
The expansion into secondary ports like Bohol and Camiguin is a calculated move to prevent over-tourism in Manila and Palawan while stimulating economic growth in underdeveloped provinces. The success of this model depends entirely on the PPA's ability to scale infrastructure at the same rate as passenger growth.
The Philippines is no longer just a stop on a Southeast Asian itinerary; it is becoming the anchor of the region's cruise economy.
The Philippines is quickly "becoming the anchor of the region's cruise economy."
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