Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 23) — The Department of Health on Sunday reported 29,828 more COVID-19 cases, with the country’s total hitting 3,417,216.
The DOH said 29,237 (98%) of the new cases occurred within the last 14 days. Metro Manila was the top contributing region during the period with 5,178 (18%), followed by Calabarzon with 4,227 (14%), and Central Luzon with 2,787 (10%).
There are now 273,580 active cases, which make up 8% of the overall tally. This is lower than Saturday’s count of over 280,000.
The drop in the number of active cases came as the DOH listed 36,763 new recoveries, which raised the survivor count to 3,090,164.
The DOH also reported 67 more deaths, of which 49 occurred this month. The other 18 occurred from June to December last year and were encoded late.
Nationwide, the total lives lost to COVID-19 reached 53,472.
According to DOH, around 69,000 tests were reported on Jan. 21, with the positivity rate, or the percentage of infected people out of all those tested for COVID-19, remaining high at 41.8%. This marked the 17th consecutive day the positivity rate was at 40% or higher.
The DOH said two testing laboratories did not submit data on time. It added that the two laboratories contributed an average of 0% of samples tested and of positive cases over the past 14 days.
After final validation, the DOH also removed 136 duplicate entries from its data, including 78 recoveries and a fatality. Meanwhile, it reclassified as deaths 22 cases it previously declared as recoveries.
