Of the 144 deaths, 12 (8%) occurred this month, 64 (44%) in February, and 48 (33%) in January. Twenty deaths were traced to last year: three in December, six in November, four in October, and seven in September.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 6) — The total number of COVID-19 deaths in the country has reached 57,023 after 144 more people lost their lives, the Department of Health reported on Sunday.
The death toll is 1.55% of the case tally, which stood at 3,667,542 after 870 more people were reported infected.
Of the case total, 1.3% or 48,793 are active cases, with 44,131 experiencing mild symptoms, 2,693 in moderate condition, 1,279 with severe symptoms, 401 without symptoms and 289 in critical condition.
Meanwhile, 1,433 more people got well, raising the recovery count to 3,561,726 or 97.1% of the COVID-19 tally.
Five laboratories did not submit data on time. These laboratories contributed an average of 0.8% of tested samples and 0.5% of positive individuals in the last 14 days, the DOH said.
The belated reporting is due to late encoding of information to the COVIDKaya data storage system, the DOH explained.
Of the newly reported cases today, 799 (92%) occurred within the past 14 days or from Feb. 21 to March 6. The regions with the highest number of new cases in that period were Metro Manila (212 or 27%), Calabarzon (126 or 16%) and Western Visayas (80 or 10%).
The DOH said it reclassified 130 initially tagged survivors as among the dead after validation and deleted six duplicate cases, including two recoveries.
The positivity rate, or percentage of tested people with positive results, further fell to 3.9% based on 24,543 tests reported on March 4.
The World Health Organization recommends positivity rates to remain under 5% for at least 14 days for countries to reopen borders. The country’s rate has been below 5% for the past six days.
