Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 21) — The country logged 7,757 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, just a slight drop from the record-high tally posted a day before.
With COVID-19 figures on the rise, the DOH said it is geared to expand the healthcare capacity nationwide and augment the number of medical frontliners in both private and public hospitals. The department added it has been meeting with several mayors in the last few weeks to help them in implementing localized measures to address the upward trend.
This is the third consecutive day new cases breached 7,000. It also brought the total number of infected to 663,794, the Department of Health’s latest report showed. Of the overall count, 73,072 or 11% are active cases, of whom 95% exhibit mild symptoms, 2.3% have no symptoms, 1% are critical cases, 1.1% are severe, and 0.58% are moderate.
Recoveries also surged to 577,754 with 15,288 more confirmed by the DOH. This accounts for 87% of the case tally.
Meanwhile, the disease has claimed the lives of 39 more people, pushing the death toll to 12,968. The newly reported deaths include two which were previously tagged as recoveries, the DOH said.
Two testing laboratories failed to submit their data on time and were not yet included in the official figures. The DOH added that it removed 19 duplicates from the total cases after final validation, including 16 recoveries and one death.
Among Filipinos abroad, the Department of Foreign Affairs said three more tested positive for the virus, bringing the total to 15,970. The DFA listed no new deaths and recoveries, with the tallies remaining at 1,047 and 9,691, respectively.
Globally, more than 122.8 million people have been infected, of whom over 2.7 million died and some 69.5 million have gotten well, based on data from the Johns Hopkins University.
The DOH also posted an updated daily positivity rate, or the percentage of those infected out of all tested, for March 20 which stood at 15.2%. The World Health Organization recommends that this rate be maintained below 5%. According to the Johns Hopkins University, besides suggesting more widespread transmission, a higher percentage means there are likely more infected people in the community who have not been tested yet.
