New Covid-19 cases jump to 889; 214 more recoveries

MANILA – The Philippines on Wednesday logged 889 coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases which raised the total tally of confirmed infections to 2,839,790.

In its latest case bulletin, the Department of Health (DOH) noted the figure brought the total number of active infections to 10,418.

Of the active cases, 4,384 are mild, 536 are asymptomatic, 374 are critical, 1,778 are severe, and 3,346 are moderate.

“Of the 889 reported cases today, 869 or 98 percent occurred within the recent 14 days – December 16 to 29, 2021,” the DOH said.

It added that the top regions with most cases in the recent two weeks were the National Capital Region with 564 or 65 percent, Calabarzon with 86 or 10 percent, and Region 3 with 53 or 6 percent of the country’s new cases.

Some 214 new recoveries were also logged which brought the total number of recovered cases to 2,778,131.

Meantime, the death toll has reached 51,241 with 28 new deaths.

“Of the 28 deaths, seven were from December 2021, two from November, four from October, nine from September, one from August, two from July, two from July 2020, and one in June 2020 which were only reported now due to late of death information in COVIDKaya,” the DOH said.

The COVIDKaya is a digital application used by health care workers to collect and share data about Covid-19 cases.

The DOH added that this issue is currently being coordinated with the Epidemiology and Surveillance Units to ensure information is up to date.

According to DOH data on December 27, about 4.5 percent of 27,615 who were tested turned out positive for Covid-19.

“Sixteen duplicates were removed from the total case count as 13 are recoveries. There were 194 cases that have tested negative and have been removed from the final case count and reclassified as 193 of them are recoveries,” the DOH said.

It added 25 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.

Two laboratories were not operational on December 27 and one laboratory was not able to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System.

The DOH noted that the three laboratories contribute, on average, 0.4 percent of samples tested, and 0 percent of positive individuals based on data in the last 14 days.

To date, 20 percent of 3,500 intensive care unit (ICU) beds, 23 percent of 19,400 isolation beds, 11 percent of 12,200 ward beds, and 12 percent of 3,000 ventilators are utilized by patients with Covid-19 nationwide.

Meanwhile, 23 percent of 1,200 ICU beds, 21 percent of 4,700 isolation beds, 17 percent of 3,700 ward beds, and 14 percent of 1,000 ventilators dedicated to patients with Covid-19 are in use in the National Capital Region.