Among Filipinos abroad, the Department of Foreign Affairs reported a lone new case, bringing the total to 16,068 in 90 countries. Of this total, 3,855 infections have been verified by the DOH, the DFA said. The recovery count and the death toll remained at 8,738 and 1,047 respectively. There are also 5,283 patients are undergoing treatment.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 27) — The country recorded 9,595 new COVID-19 infections, pushing the total to 712,442 on Saturday, the Department of Health’s case bulletin said.
It is the second consecutive day that the country logged more than 9,000 new cases. Active cases or currently ill patients also reached a new all-time high of 118,122, which is 16.6% of the case total. At least 95.1% of the active cases have mild symptoms, 3.2% have no symptoms, 0.7% are in critical condition, 0.7% are severe cases, and 0.39% are in moderate condition.
The death toll climbed to 13,159 or 1.85% of the case count after 10 more people succumbed to the disease. Meanwhile, 481 others got better, raising the recovery count to 581,161, equivalent to 81.6% of the total number of infections.
The DOH said it reclassified four survivors into fatalities after validation and removed nine duplicates, including five recoveries. The total does not include data from 11 testing laboratories that have not yet submitted their reports, the department noted.
Positivity rate
The bulletin also posted a positivity rate of 16.2% out of 34,101 individuals tested, based on data as of noon of March 26. Positivity rate is the percentage of individuals that tested positive out of all the patients tested in a day. The figure is high since the World Health Organization recommends that the positivity rate be kept below 5%.
A higher percentage suggests more widespread transmission and that there are likely more cases which have not yet been detected, according to Johns Hopkins University. However, the DOH will still update the rate with the data from the remaining testing laboratories.
The DOH COVID-19 tracker also gave an updated positivity rate for March 25 at 18.1%, making it the second day in a row that the rate of positive individuals was above 18%. It falls just a few points below the all-time high of 23.8% recorded in April 4 last year.
