The daily positivity rate or rate of infected patients among those tested, is 17.1%. This is the rate based on 50,968 tests done as of April 21 but it is likely to change as the DOH gets more data. Although positivity rates have been gradually going down the past few days coming from a peak of 25% on April 2, the rate is still high as world health officials recommend that it be kept below 5%. High rates indicate that there are more undetected infections.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 23) — The country’s coronavirus tally moved close to 980,000 on Friday, after 8,719 more people got infected, according to the Department of Health.
The DOH daily bulletin counted a total of 979,740 cases, with 10.5% or 102,799 that are active or currently ill. At least 96.4% of the active infections have mild symptoms, 1.3% have no symptoms, 0.9% are in severe condition, 0.7% are in a critical state, and 0.58% are moderate infections.
The death toll also jumped to 16,529 – which is 1.69% of the case count – after 159 more patients succumbed to the disease. It is the third day in a row that there were more than 100 deaths in a day. However, the DOH said 77 of these new fatalities were added after validation showed they were mistakenly tagged as survivors previously.
Meanwhile, the recovery tally hiked to 860,412 or 87.8% of the COVID-19 total with 13,812 more patients cleared of the virus. It marks the fourth straight day of over 13,000 new recoveries. The DOH earlier notified the public of higher daily recoveries this week due to changes in its reporting rules.
The agency added that it deleted 28 duplicates with 14 recoveries. One laboratory did not hold operations on April 21, while data from six laboratories were excluded from the report due to failure to submit details on time, it added.
Among Filipinos abroad, the infection total slightly rose to 18,223 with five new cases. Two patients also died, raising the casualty count to 1,124, while the survivor tally stayed at 11,181. There are also 5,918 Filipinos undergoing treatment.
The OCTA Research Team noted that the COVID-19 situation in Metro Manila has improved but bed occupancy rates remain high. The experts recommended to retain current quarantine restrictions so that the reproduction number or the number of people infected by a single case, stays below 1.
