Of the newly reported cases, 1,828 (95%) occurred within the past 14 days or from Feb. 6 to 19. The regions with the highest number of new cases in that period were Metro Manila (371 or 20%), Calabarzon (197 or 11%), and Central Luzon (188 or 10%).
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, February 19)— The Department of Health (DOH) reported 1,923 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday – less than 2,000 for the first time since December — and 198 more deaths.
The death toll climbed to 55,607 or 1.52% of all infections.
The case total is now at 3,650,748 with 1.7% or 62,533 active cases or people currently sick – with 57,104 having mild symptoms, 2,854 in moderate condition, 1,420 with severe symptoms, 851 without symptoms, and 304 in critical condition.
The death toll climbed to 55,607 or 1.52% of all infections. Among the 198 deaths, 50 (25%) occurred this month, and 138 (70%) last month. There were also ten traced back to last year: two each in December, October, September and August, and one each in July and March.
The belated reporting is due to late encoding of information to the COVIDKaya data storage system, the DOH explained.
Meanwhile, 5,158 others got well, raising the recovery count to 3,532,608 – or 96.8% of the COVID-19 tally.
The agency said it reclassified 176 initially tagged survivors as among the dead after validation, and deleted 100 duplicate cases, including 94 recoveries.
Six laboratories did not submit their data on time, the DOH said. These laboratories contributed an average of 0.8% of tested samples and 0.4% of positive individuals.
The positivity rate, or percentage of tested people with positive results, dropped further to 7.9% based on 27,761 tests reported on Feb. 17.
The World Health Organization recommends positivity rates of below 5% for countries or regions to reopen.
