The positivity rate – or percentage of all tested people who came out positive – rose from 24.9% based on tests from August 22 to 25.5% based on 46,193 tests reported on August 23.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 25) — The country logged 13,573 new COVID-19 infections on Wednesday, pushing the case total to 1,883,088, the Department of Health reported.
“The relatively low number of cases today is due to lower laboratory output last Monday,” the DOH said.
Of the total, 6.7% or 125,378 are active cases or currently ill patients. At least 95.9% of active cases have mild symptoms, 1.3% are asymptomatic, 1.2% have severe symptoms, 0.94% are in moderate condition and 0.6% are in critical condition.
The death toll jumped to 32,492 – which is 1.73% of the case tally – after 228 more people lost their lives to the coronavirus. It’s the eighth day in a row that the country logged at least 150 fatalities.
Meanwhile, 15,820 patients got better, raising the recovery number to 1,725,218 or 91.6% of the COVID-19 total.
The DOH said it reclassified 152 survivors into deaths after validation and deleted 176 duplicates, including 174 recoveries.
The total excludes data from seven laboratories which failed to submit their reports on time, the agency added. These laboratories contributed an average of 0.9% of tested samples and 1% of positive individuals in the last 14 days.
A positivity rate above 20% is at critical level which indicates the need to test more people, according to US nonprofit Covid Act Now, which is used by OCTA researchers for reference in its projections. An area should aim for a positivity rate of below 3% which means there is adequate testing, Covid Act Now says.
For its part, the World Health Organization regards a rate below 5% as indicating that the infection is under control.
OCTA also released a report saying COVID-19 growth rates have decreased in Metro Manila and Cagayan de Oro City. However, Metro Manila’s reproduction rate – or the number of people infected by a single case – is still at critical level or over 1.4.
Cagayan de Oro is also tagged as an area of concern, but due to its lower reproduction rate – from 1.38 seven days ago to 1.15 now – the number of cases there may decrease in one or two weeks, if the current trend continues, OCTA added.
