The positivity rate or percentage of people who tested positive dropped for the third consecutive day, but it remains above the critical level of above 20% at 22.2% based on 38,243 tests reported on August 15.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 17) — The country logged 10,035 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, pushing the nationwide tally to 1,765,675, the Department of Health said.
The total excludes data from six laboratories that failed to submit their reports on time, it added.
“The relatively low number of cases today is due to lower laboratory output on Sunday,” the department noted.
The DOH case bulletin said 6% or 105,787 of the infections are active or currently sick people – with 96.1% experiencing mild symptoms, 1.3% with severe symptoms, 0.9% asymptomatic, 0.9% in moderate condition, and 0.7% in critical condition.
The death toll also climbed to 30,462 or 1.73% of the COVID-19 total after 96 more people lost their lives to the disease. Meanwhile, 10,858 others got better, raising the recovery count to 1,629,426 or 92.3% of the case tally.
The DOH said it reclassified 39 survivors into fatalities after validation and deleted 206 duplicate cases, including 201 recoveries.
The agency also said the excluded laboratories contributed an average of 1.2% of samples tested and 1.4% of positive individuals in the last 14 days.
The rate means the country needs to test more people since the benchmark for adequate testing is a positivity rate below 3%, according to US nonprofit Covid Act Now, which OCTA researchers use as basis for their projections.
The World Health Organization also says the positivity rate of an area should be below 5% to say that the infection is under control.
The OCTA team said it is not pushing for a nationwide lockdown to address the rise in cases. Instead, regions should intensify border control, it added. OCTA Research Fellow Guido David also said the effects of the current enhanced community quarantine in several areas including the National Capital Region will be felt after at least four weeks.
