Experts from the OCTA Research Team earlier warned of a possible post-Christmas season jump in cases amid backlogs in reporting. The DOH also projected the case count in Metro Manila to spike to as many as 4,000 a day by the end of January amid leniency during the holiday celebrations.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 9) — The country recorded a surge of new COVID-19 cases with 1,952 more infections, the Department of Health said on Saturday.
The number is the highest daily record in the past three weeks. On Dec. 18, the department logged over 2,000 new cases.
The total tally is now at 485,797 with 5.5% or 26,784 active cases, according to the DOH case bulletin. Of these active cases or currently ill patients, at least 83.1% have mild symptoms, 8.6% have no symptoms, 5.1% are in critical condition, 2.8% are severe cases, and 0.47% are moderate infections.
Davao City recorded the highest number of new cases with 143, followed by Quezon City with 98, Rizal with 80, Cavite with 77 and Bulacan with 74, the DOH said.
Meanwhile, 34 others succumbed to the disease, pushing the death toll to 9,398 or 1.93% of the COVID-19 infections tally. There were also 291 recoveries, raising the survivor count to 449,615, which is 92.6% of the total number of cases.
The department said it removed seven duplicate cases from the total number, including three recoveries. It also corrected its previous report wherein three survivors were actually deaths after validation.
The tally did not include data from seven COVID-19 laboratories that were not able to submit their reports on time, the agency added.
The Department of Foreign Affairs, on the other hand, said it did not receive any new reports on cases among overseas Filipinos. The infected toll in 84 countries stayed at 13,018 with 934 deaths and 8,460 recoveries, while 3,624 patients are undergoing treatment.
