Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 18) — The country logged 4,487 new COVID-19 infections, the lowest in two months, but this excludes data from eight laboratories, the Department of Health said on Tuesday.
The daily positivity rate or rate of individuals that tested positive stood at 13% out of 26,672 tests conducted. The figure is still beyond the recommended rate of below 5% by the World Health Organization. High rates may mean high transmission, experts have said.
Among Filipinos abroad, eleven more cases were detected, along with one new recovery and two more fatalities, the Department of Foreign Affairs said. The total number of infected among overseas Filipinos is now 18,629 with 11,375 survivors and 1,163 deaths, as well as 6,091 patients undergoing treatment.
In a briefing, the DOH noted that the country is now averaging 5,886 cases per day, almost half of its peak of 10,406 from April 6 to 12. In Metro Manila, the average also dropped from a peak of 5,325 in March 30 to April 5, down to 1,417 as of recent days.
However, although cases are declining in Metro Manila, the department said there is a need to monitor the situation in Visayas and Mindanao as ten regions that are mostly from these areas registered a growth in the rate of infected persons per a population of 100,000.
It is the lowest daily case count after March 17, when there were 4,387 cases reported.
The death toll increased to 19,372 – which is 1.68% of the case tally – after 110 more people lost their lives to the disease. The DOH said 64 of the new fatalities were previously tagged as recoveries and reclassified after validation.
The nationwide tally of cases is now at 1,154,388, with 4.5% or 52,291 active or currently ill patients, according to the DOH daily case bulletin. At least 93.1% of the active cases have mild symptoms, 2.2% have no symptoms, 2% have severe symptoms, 1.5% are in critical condition and 1.29% are moderate, the department added.
Meanwhile, 6,383 more people were cleared of the virus, raising the recovery count to 1,082,725 or 93.8% of the COVID-19 total. The Health Department said it deleted 24 duplicates including 22 survivors.
The DOH said the eight laboratories which failed to submit their data on time contributed over the past two weeks an average of 2.5% of samples tested and 2.7% positive individuals.
