Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 12) – The country broke another coronavirus record on Wednesday, as its active case count shot up to 208,164 – its highest yet, according to the Department of Health.
This is only the second time that the number of Filipinos currently sick with COVID-19 breached the 200,000 mark. It surpassed the previous record of 203,710 reported during the case surge in April last year.
The new all-time high figure came as the DOH announced 32,246 more cases, the second sharpest increase the Philippines has seen. The biggest was on Monday, when over 33,000 more people were confirmed infected.
But according to the Health department, 11 testing laboratories have yet to submit their latest results. These facilities contributed an average of 3.3% of all samples tested and 4.5% of all positive cases in the last two weeks.
The total cases are now at 3,058,634.
Some 63,900 tests were reported on Jan. 10, the bulletin showed, with a positivity rate of 45.7%. This is also the second highest, next to Monday’s 46%. It means more than 4 in 10 people tested for COVID-19 were found positive.
Of the new cases, the DOH said 17,902, or over half, came from Metro Manila. Still rounding up the top three contributing regions are Calabarzon with 6,838 and Central Luzon with 3,268.
The department also noted 453 infections occurred more than two weeks ago and had just been encoded.
It further detailed that nearly 95% of the active cases are tagged as mild. Meanwhile, there are 1,468 severe cases (0.7%) and 298 critical (0.14%), and the rest are moderate (1.4%) or asymptomatic (3%) cases.
The death toll also hit 52,654 after 144 more succumbed to the disease. Only 20 of them, however, died this month. The 124 others were part of late reports from January to December of last year.
Another 5,063 survivors, on the other hand, brought the recovery tally to 2,797,816.
The DOH said 125 cases it previously declared as recoveries turned out to be deaths after final validation. It also deleted 85 duplicate entries from its data.
