Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 2) —The country recorded 16,621 new COVID-19 cases, pushing the nationwide tally to 2,020,484, the Department of Health reported Thursday.
Of the total, 146,510 are active cases or currently ill patients, DOH’s latest bulletin showed. This is the seventh straight day that the country registered over 140,000 active cases. At least 96.2% of patients are experiencing mild symptoms, 1.1% are asymptomatic, 0.6% are in critical condition, 1.1% are severe, and 0.99% have moderate symptoms.
Meanwhile, 148 more patients succumbed to COVID-19, bringing the death toll to 33,680. At least 10,965 recovered, pushing the COVID-19 survivor count to 1,840,294, the department’s data showed.
The DOH said 92 duplicates were removed from the total case count. Of these, 78 are recoveries and one death.
It added that 66 cases previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.
All laboratories were operational on Aug. 31, but five laboratories failed to submit their data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System. These laboratories contribute, on average, 0.9% of samples tested and 0.9% of positive cases.
The daily positivity rate, or percentage of people who tested positive, stood at 26.9% based on 60,973 tests done on Aug. 31. The World Health Organization recommends a positivity rate of below 5%, as bigger numbers may indicate high transmission.
The DOH said earlier that infections may still peak in the middle of September as the more contagious Delta variant could possibly increase the numbers.
