The World Health Organization earlier said the positivity rate should be below 5% before governments consider relaxing movement restrictions.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 10) — The Department of Health on Friday recorded 17,964 new COVID-19 cases, with 9,067 recoveries and 168 deaths.
The figures do not include data from four laboratories.
“All labs were operational on September 8, 2021 while 4 labs were not able to submit their data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System,” the department said in a statement.
The latest tally brings the total number of infections to 2,179,770, of which 175,470 are currently ill, 1,969,401 are tagged as recovered while 34,899 died.
The DOH said 86 duplicates were removed from the total case count.
It added that 79 cases previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.
The positivity rate – or percentage of all coronavirus tests performed that turn out to be positive – is at 28.9%. This is based on 76,562 tests reported on September 8. The highest positivity rate was logged on Sept. 7 at 29.4%.
