27K new recoveries from Covid-19 hike count to 2.2M

MANILA – An additional 27,120 have recovered from the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), raising the total to 2,267,678, the Department of Health (DOH) reported Saturday.

In its latest case bulletin, the DOH also added 16,907 to the active cases, jacking up the number of those undergoing treatment to 165,092.

The death toll remained at 37,405 as no new fatalities have been reported for two days straight since September 23.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire earlier said the “zero death” in its bulletin was due to a storage issue in its COVID-KAYA system.

“The Department of Information and Communications Technology is currently addressing issues encountered by the system. When the issue is resolved, the succeeding increase in deaths in the following reports will be due to the previous days’ backlogs,” the DOH said.

Since the start of the pandemic last year, the DOH has recorded a total of 2,470,175 Covid-19 cases, of which 6.7 percent are undergoing treatment, 91.8 percent are recoveries, and 1.51 percent are fatalities.

Around 81.3 percent of the active cases have mild symptoms, 13.3 percent are asymptomatic, 0.7 percent are critical, 1.6 percent are severe, and 3.12 are moderate.

The DOH said 23.6 percent turned out positive for SARS-CoV-2 from the 74,606 individuals who were tested on Thursday.

All laboratories that day were operational but four failed to submit data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System.

The four laboratories make up at least 0.7 percent of all the samples tested and 0.8 percent of the positive individuals in the last 14 days.

Vergeire, in a Laging Handa briefing on Saturday, said the DOH is trying to analyze if the use of antigen tests is affecting the output of laboratories.

She added that DOH will gradually include antigen test results in its daily case bulletin upon thorough validation.

“[S]imula po next week, unti-unti na po nating ipapasok iyan at magkakaroon naman tayo ng qualifier kung ilan ang RT-PCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction), ilan naman po ang antigen test doon po sa kasong ire-report natin sa ating public (Starting next week, we will gradually include that and we will have a qualifier to distinguish the number of RT-PCR test result from antigen),” she said.

Meanwhile, the Covid-19 hospital bed occupancy rate nationwide remains high, with 76 percent of 4,400 intensive care unit (ICU) beds occupied as well as 64 percent of 21,100 isolation beds, and 70 percent of 16,000 ward beds.

In the National Capital Region, in use are 76 percent of the 1,600 ICU beds, 54 percent of the 4,700 isolation beds, and 68 percent of the 4,500 ward beds.