Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 5) — The Department of Health (DOH) recorded 941 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, pushing the nationwide total to 3,666,678.
Of the total, 1.3% or 49,374 are active cases or people currently sick – with 44,586 experiencing mild symptoms; 2,736 in moderate condition; 1,344 with severe symptoms; 416 without symptoms; and 292 in critical condition.
The death toll climbed to 56,879 – 1.55% of all infections – after 109 more people lost their lives to the disease.
Meanwhile, 1,784 others got well, raising the survivor count to 3,560,425 – or 97.1% of the COVID-19 count.
One laboratory failed to submit its data on time, the DOH said. The lone non-reporting laboratory contributed an average of 0.5% of tested samples and 0.2% of positive individuals.
Of the newly reported cases today, 833 (89%) occurred within the past 14 days or from Feb. 20 to March 5. The regions with the highest number of new cases in that period were Metro Manila (223 or 27%), Calabarzon (124 or 15%), and Central Visayas (80 or 10%).
Of the 109 deaths, 11 (10%) occurred this month, 59 (54%) last month, and 24 (22%) in January. There were also 15 traced to last year: one in October, two in September, five in August, one in July, five in June and one in May.
The belated reporting is due to the late encoding of information to the COVIDKaya data storage system, the DOH explained.
The DOH said it reclassified 96 initially tagged survivors as among the dead after validation, and deleted ten duplicate recoveries.
The positivity rate – or percentage of tested people with positive results – fell to 3.8% based on 26,737 tests reported on March 3.
The World Health Organization recommends positivity rates to remain below 5% for at least 14 days for countries or regions to reopen. The country’s rate has been under 5% for the past five days.
