Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 31) — The country on Monday logged 14,546 new COVID-19 cases, pushing the nationwide count to 3,560,202, the Department of Health’s latest bulletin showed.
This is the seventh-straight day that the country’s daily new cases fell below 20,000.
Of the total cases, 190,818 are active cases or currently ill patients, including 177,584 with mild symptoms, 8,239 asymptomatic patients, 3,126 with moderate symptoms, 1,540 with severe symptoms, and 329 in critical condition.
At least 112 more people died of COVID-19 infection, bringing the death toll to 54,003. There were also 26,500 new survivors, pushing the recovery count to 3,315,381.
The DOH said that all laboratories were operational last Jan. 29. However, three other laboratories were not able to submit their data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System. Based on the numbers in the past 14 days, the non-reporting laboratories contribute, on average, 0.5% of samples tested and 0.1% of positive cases.
Out of the new cases reported, 10,203 occurred in the past two weeks from Jan. 18 to 31. The top regions with the most cases during the period were Davao Region with 1,381 cases, National Capital Region with 1,053 cases, and Central Visayas with 973 cases.
Of the 112 deaths recorded, 107 transpired in January, two in November 2021, two in October 2021, and one in May 2021. The late reporting was due to the delayed encoding of information to the COVID-Kaya data storage system, the DOH explained.
The department also said that 24 duplicates were removed from the total case count. Of these, 11 were recoveries.
Moreover, 33 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.
The positivity rate, or percentage of tested people with positive results, stood at 28.4% based on 52,013 tests reported on Jan. 29.
Under World Health Organization standards, the ideal positivity rate is below 5% and must be maintained for at least 14 days for countries or regions to reopen.
