Of the total, 6.5% or 226,521 are active or those who currently have the disease — 214,857 have mild symptoms; 6,875 have no symptoms; 2,971 are in moderate condition; 1,509 have severe symptoms; and 309 are in critical condition.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 27) — The Department of Health (DOH) listed 18,191 new COVID-19 infections on Thursday, pushing the nationwide tally to 3,493,447.
Of the newly reported cases, 17,625 (97%) occurred within the past 14 days or from Jan. 14 to 27.
The death toll rose to 53,736 — 1.54% of all infections — after 74 more people lost their lives.
Meanwhile, 22,014 others got better, raising the recovery count to 3,213,190 — 92% of the COVID-19 total.
The DOH said it reclassified 26 initially tagged survivors as among the dead after validation, and deleted 37 duplicate cases, including 17 recoveries and two deaths.
Two laboratories did not submit data and were excluded from the total, the agency added. These laboratories contributed an average of 0.3% of tested samples and 0.3% of positive individuals in the last 14 days.
The regions with the highest number of cases in that period were Calabarzon (2,101 or 12%), Metro Manila (2,073 or 12%) and Davao Region (2,011 or 11%).
Among the 74 deaths, 69 (93%) occurred this month and three last year: one each in October, July, and May. There were also two traced as far back as 2020 — one in July and another in April.
The DOH explained that the late encoding was due to delays in the uploading of information to the data storage to COVIDKaya system.
The positivity rate, or percentage of tested people with positive results, further dropped to 35.2% based on 61,013 tests reported on Jan. 25.
However, the rate is still way beyond the ideal below 5% recommended by the World Health Organization for countries to reopen.
