The agency initially reported 190 fatalities, but later revised the number.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 29) — The country’s COVID-19 death toll soared to 38,164 with 186 new fatalities on Wednesday, the Department of Health (DOH) reported.
“The relatively low cases today is due to lower laboratory output last Monday, September 27,” said the DOH.
The department said testing output on September 27 was only 51,377 compared to the 70,134 average daily test results in the last seven days.
Out of the total number of cases, 5.2% or 132,339 are active or currently sick patients. At least 76.7% of active cases have mild symptoms, 16.4% are asymptomatic, 3.91% are in moderate condition, 2.1% have severe symptoms and 0.9% are in critical condition.
Recoveries rose to 2,365,229 or 93.3% of the case count after 12,236 more people got better.
The DOH said it reclassified 120 survivors into deaths after validation and deleted 38 duplicate cases, including 27 recoveries.
Data from one laboratory were excluded from the count due to failure to submit its report on time, the DOH added. The laboratory contributed an average of 0.2% of samples tested and 0.3% of positive individuals in the last 14 days.
About an hour before DOH posted the day’s bulletin, it also announced 292 additional deaths from backlogs caused by issues in the data repository COVIDKaya system.
The positivity rate or percentage of tested people with positive results further dropped from 24.1% on September 26 to 22.9% based on 51,327 tests reported on September 27.
The rate needs to fall below 3% to show there is adequate testing, according to US nonprofit Covid Act Now. For the World Health Organization, the positivity rate should be under 5% to indicate that infection has been controlled.
The DOH also earlier on Wednesday said 633 more cases of COVID-19 variants of concern were found in the country, including 339 that were of the Delta variant. With the additional cases, there are now 3,366 Delta variant cases in the country.
Amid these developments, the national government also approved the vaccination of individuals aged 12-17 who have health risks. They will receive vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna, which were the only two brands given approval for inoculation of minors.
