Of the new cases, 98% or 33,456 occurred within the past 14 days (Dec. 31, 2021 to Jan. 13, 2022). The regions with the highest number of new infections in that period were Metro Manila (16,793 or 50%), Calabarzon (7,131 or 21%), and Central Luzon (3,745 or 11%).
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 13) — The Department of Health (DOH) reported 34,021 new COVID-19 infections on Thursday, the highest single-day tally, bringing the nationwide total to 3,092,409.
Active cases, or people who are currently sick, are also at an all-time-high at 237,387, which is 7.7% of the COVID-19 count.
Of the active cases, 225,408 have mild symptoms; 7,332 have no symptoms; 2,881 are in moderate condition; 1,468 have severe symptoms; and 298 are in critical condition.
The death toll increased to 52,736 — 1.71% of the case count — after 82 more people lost their lives.
Meanwhile, 4,694 others got better, raising the recovery tally to 2,802,286 or 90.6% of the number of infections.
Seven laboratories failed to submit their data on time and were not included in the total, the DOH added. These laboratories contributed an average of 5% of tested samples and 6.6% of positive individuals in the last 14 days.
Of the 82 deaths, 37 (45%) occurred this month. There were 44 recorded last year: five (6%) in December, two (2%) in November, six (7%) in October, 13 (16%) in September, four (5%) in August, two (2%) in July, one (1%) in May, seven (9%) in April, two (2%) in March, and two (2%) in January.
There was also one reported fatality traced as far back as April 2020.
The DOH said the belated reporting was due to delayed encoding of information to the COVIDKaya data storage system.
The DOH said it reclassified 44 previously tagged survivors as among the dead after validation and deleted 246 duplicate cases, including 180 recoveries.
The positivity rate — or percentage of tested people with positive results — soared to 47.9%, based on 78,866 tests reported on Jan. 11. It is the highest recorded rate since data became available.
The World Health Organization has said positivity rates should be below 5% for at least 14 days for countries or regions to reopen. A rate of above 20% means testing efforts are inadequate, according to US nonprofit Covid Act Now.
