Indonesia says lack of coronavirus cases a blessing from God

JAKARTA - Indonesia's health minister defended the country's screening process for coronavirus on Thursday and said the absence of confirmed cases in the world's fourth most populous nation was a "blessing from the Almighty."

The sprawling Southeast Asian country of more than 260 million people has not recorded any cases though some of its citizens overseas have contracted the virus, including eight crew on the Diamond Princess cruise liner off Japan's Yokohama.

Health Minister Terawan Agus Putranto said 134 test samples taken from people suspected of having the coronavirus had turned out negative.

"If until this second all came out negative, then it's a blessing from the Almighty," he told reporters.

Putranto said tests on two patients who died this week after suffering symptoms associated with contracting the virus had been negative.

On Feb. 23, a Singaporean man died after reportedly suffering from fever and shortness of breath in the city of Batam, but the head of the local health agency said this was due to another unspecified disease.

The death of a 37-year-old man in Semarang in Central Java who was suffering from pneumonia after returning from overseas was not caused by the coronavirus but by the H1N1 flu, he said.

Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the United States said in a study this month that Indonesia should strengthen outbreak surveillance and control - especially as it had direct flights from the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak.

The Harvard team said Indonesia's lack of confirmed cases "may suggest the potential for undetected cases" as air travel may contribute to cases being exported from China.

WHO 'QUITE CONFIDENT'

Indonesia has barred entry to visitors who have been in China for 14 days and stopped all flights to and from there.

Indonesia has tested relatively few people in comparison to some neighbors and its population, but Putranto said tests were conducted when "doctors determine they have symptoms that point to that direction."

"Imagine if everybody who had a cough or flu was checked, then millions would be checked," he said.

Navaratnasamy Paranietharan, the World Health Organization's Indonesia representative, has said the WHO was "quite confident that Indonesia is ready to be able to respond to this situation."

Separately, Indonesia will send a Garuda Indonesia plane in the next few days to Japan to pick up 68 of its citizens working aboard the coronavirus-stricken Diamond Princess, officials said.

The crew could be quarantined for up to 28 days on Sebaru island in the Java Sea north of Jakarta, where 188 crew members from another cruise ship are also being held in quarantine.

The coronavirus has infected more than 80,000 people globally and killed nearly 2,800, the majority in China. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Pope Francis: Big Bang theory does not contradict role of God

VATICAN CITY - Scientific theories including the "Big Bang" believed to have brought the universe into being 13.7 billion years ago and the idea that life developed through a process of evolution do not conflict with Catholic teaching, Pope Francis said on Tuesday.

Addressing a meeting of the Pontificial Academy of Sciences, an independent body housed in the Vatican and financed largely by the Holy See, Francis said scientific explanations for the world did not exclude the role of God in creation.

"The beginning of the world is not the work of chaos that owes its origin to something else, but it derives directly from a supreme principle that creates out of love," he said.

"The 'Big Bang', that today is considered to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the creative intervention of God, on the contrary it requires it," he said.

"Evolution in nature is not in contrast with the notion of (divine) creation because evolution requires the creation of the beings that evolve," the pope said.

The Church once opposed early scientific explanations of the universe that contradicted the account of creation in the Bible, famously condemning the 17th century astronomer Galileo Galilei who showed that the earth revolved around the sun.

However, more recently it has sought to shed its image as an enemy of science and the pope's comments largely echoed statements from his predecessors.

Pope Pius XII described evolution as a valid scientific approach to the development of humans in 1950 and Pope John Paul reiterated that in 1996.

In 2011, the former Pope Benedict said scientific theories on the origin and development of the universe and humans, while not in conflict with faith, left many questions unanswered.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Catholic devotees told: Medals, scapulars not magic

MANILA - A priest in Jaro, Iloilo has issued a reminder to Catholic devotees that scapulars and medals have nothing to do with magic.

"One has to understand their use. Just getting hold of the promise without understanding its content and demands can easily lead them to be treated as amulets and bodily decorations," a CBCPNews report quoted Monsignor Alejandro P. Esperancilla as saying.

Esperancilla, who serves as special assistant for liturgical affairs of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Candles in Jaro, said wearing medals and scapulars means one wants to place himself under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

"This will necessarily include the desire to imitate her life of being totally in the service of God," he said.

He explained that the scapular evolved from the religious vestment of the Carmelite Order, whose members were largely responsible for popularizing the devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, their patroness, through this sacramental.

Therefore, a wearer of the scapular has the obligation to live according to the values of that community: "simplicity in dress, behavior and life, penance and mortification, prayer, hospitality and charity to the less fortunate."

Esperancilla also stressed that devotees should focus on the spirit behind these sacramentals, which is to become "imitators of our Blessed Mother in her life of service to her Son, Jesus Christ," and not on the promises attached to them.

"Only then can the promises be fulfilled," he said, adding that serious effort should be made to use them correctly.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com