Handwashing pioneer Ignaz Semmelweis honored by Google Doodle

Ignaz Semmelweis, the man credited for pioneering handwashing, is the latest Google Doodle.

Google featured the Hungarian physician and scientist, also known as the "father of infection control," on its homepage amid the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) around the world.

"On this day in 1847, Semmelweis was appointed Chief Resident in the maternity clinic of the Vienna General Hospital, where he deduced and demonstrated that requiring doctors to disinfect their hands vastly reduced the transmission of disease," Google said.

Semmelweis had ordered physicians to wash their hands with a solution of chlorinated lime when he realized that those who came directly from the dissecting room to the maternity ward carried the infection from mothers who had died of childbed fever.

More than a quarter of a million cases of the new coronavirus have been recorded, with 11,129 deaths, according to an AFP tally compiled at 1900 GMT on Friday based on official sources.

There have been at least 258,930 infections reported in 163 countries and territories.

In the Philippines, a total of 230 confirmed COVID-19 cases have been reported, with 18 deaths.

—JCB, GMA News