Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 7) — The country reached a grim milestone on Friday, as daily COVID-19 cases breached the 20,000 mark after 21,819 new infections were announced by the Department of Health (DOH).
The last time the country tallied over 20,000 fresh COVID-19 cases was in Sept. 26 last year, when there were 20,755.
The DOH said 99% or 21,656 of the newly confirmed cases were detected within the last 14 days. The top three contributing regions remain unchanged, with Metro Manila coming in first after registering 13,634, followed by Calabarzon with 4,129, and Central Luzon with 2,084.
The country’s positivity rate — or percentage of tested people who yielded positive results — continues to increase with a new record high of 40.0%, based on 70,049 tests reported on Jan. 5.
A rate of above 20% is at critical level while below 3% indicates there is adequate testing, according to US nonprofit Covid Act Now. The World Health Organization suggests a positivity rate of below 5% for an area that has controlled the infection.
Overall COVID-19 cases in the country have now breached 2.9 million with a total of 2,910,664. The number of active cases, or currently sick patients, also jumped to 77,369 or 2.7% of the case tally.
The DOH said among the active cases, 70,321 are considered mild, 2,837 are moderate, 2,438 have no symptoms, 1,461 are severe, and 312 are critical.
Meanwhile, the death toll climbed to 51,871 — which is 1.78% of the case count — after 129 more people lost their lives to the disease.
Of the new deaths, eight occurred in January, 34 in December 2021, 14 in November 2021, 26 in October 2021, 32 in September 2021, 10 in August 2021, four in July 2021, and one in April 2021.
Around 973 individuals got better, raising the number of recoveries to 2,781,424 — or 95.6% of the COVID-19 count.
The DOH said it reclassified 111 survivors into deaths after validation, and deleted 72 duplicate cases, including 51 recoveries and one fatality.
The total excludes data from ten laboratories that failed to submit their reports on time, the agency added. These laboratories contributed an average of 0.8% of tested samples and 1.5% of positive individuals in the last 14 days.
Also on Friday, independent monitoring group OCTA Research warned the country could have up to 25,000 fresh COVID-19 cases on Jan. 8.
OCTA fellow Guido David said they expect the number of new infections to range from 24,000 to 25,000 on Saturday “just based on trends.”
Metro Manila is now classified as “critical” risk for COVID-19 due to the rapidly rising numbers. It jumped to the highest from “very low” risk in just eight days.
David said he is not discounting the possibility that the capital region may be placed under the stricter Alert Level 4.
Reacting to his statement, Interior Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya told CNN Philippines the Technical Working Group on Data Analytics — led by the Health department — “is currently studying the situation and will make the appropriate recommendation to the Inter-Agency Task Force.”
CNN Philippines’ Currie Cator contributed to this report.
