Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 14) — The country on Sunday recorded 4,899 new COVID-19 cases, with the total climbing to 621,498, according to the Department of Health.
The latest data showed that of the nationwide count, 48,157 or 7.7% are currently ill patients. A month ago, the number of active cases was just over 25,000.
Another 13,371 infected patients have also gotten well, bringing the survivor tally to 560,512. This is the highest single-day jump since Nov. 1, when the country logged over 17,000 new recoveries.
Meanwhile, 63 more died, as fatalities reached 12,829. Of the newly reported deaths, the department said 16 were previously tagged as survivors.
Five testing laboratories failed to submit their reports on time and were not yet included in the updated tally, the DOH said. It added that it removed 12 duplicate entries after final data validation, including nine recoveries.
Just a day before, new COVID-19 infections hit 5,000, the country’s steepest daily rise in nearly seven months. A health official stressed, however, that more data is needed to ascertain whether the P.1. variant is more transmissible or causes a more severe disease.
Normally, figures are in the hundreds, but the country sees thousands of recoveries every Sunday due to the DOH’s weekly release of data from its Oplan Recovery program. This is a time-based tagging scheme, wherein mild and asymptomatic COVID-19 patients are released from isolation facilities after a certain number of days in quarantine and after symptoms have disappeared upon a doctor’s assessment. A confirmatory RT-PCR test is no longer required.
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Meanwhile, among Filipinos abroad, the Department of Foreign Affairs said it received no new COVID-19 reports, with the case tally remaining at 15,876 with 9,554 survivors and 1,041 deaths.
