The positivity rate – or percentage of tested people with positive results – fell to 24.9% based on 53,249 tests reported on September 20, from the 27% recorded the previous day.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 22) — The country logged 15,592 new COVID-19 infections on Wednesday, bringing the nationwide tally to 2,417,419, according to the Department of Health.
The DOH noted that testing output was lower than usual.
“Testing output last September 20 is only 53,349 compared to the 73,904 average daily testing output for the last 7 days,” said the agency in an addendum on its case bulletin.
It reported that out of the number of infections, 6.7% or 162,580 are active cases or currently sick patients. At least 92% of active cases have mild symptoms, 3% are asymptomatic, 2.81% are in moderate condition, 1.5% have severe symptoms, and 0.7% are in critical condition.
The number of recovered patients also surpassed 2.2 million at 2,217,611 – which is 91.7% of the COVID-19 total – after 24,059 more people recuperated.
Meanwhile, 154 more lost their lives, pushing the death toll to 37,228 or 1.54% of the case count.
The DOH said it reclassified 89 survivors into fatalities after validation and deleted 89 duplicate cases, including 59 recoveries.
The total excluded data from four laboratories that failed to submit their reports on time, it said.
These laboratories contributed an average of 0.3% of tested samples and 0.3% of positive individuals in the last 14 days, the DOH added.
A positivity rate of above 20% is at critical level while a percentage of below 3% means there is adequate testing, according to US nonprofit Covid Act Now.
The World Health Organization, meanwhile, says the positivity rate should be below 5% to indicate that an area has controlled the infection.
The OCTA research team also noted that cases in the National Capital Region continue to decline.
The region’s reproduction number (R0) went down to 1.03 on Tuesday, from 1.33 recorded a week ago, OCTA Research fellow Guido David’s estimates showed on Wednesday. The R0 is the average number of people a single COVID-19 case will likely infect.
Medical experts earlier said the ideal R0 should be one or less, as anything higher means there is still significant community transmission.
The group also tagged Isabela, Cagayan, Benguet, Laguna, and Bataan as “provinces of concern.”
