Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 25) — Seventeen more patients have died of the coronavirus disease in the country, which recorded a slower increase in infections on Saturday.
The Department of Health in its 4:00 p.m. bulletin said the nationwide death toll is now at 494. Earlier, it said the country’s case fatality rate was at 6.6 percent.
The agency also reported 102 new infections, bringing the country total to 7,294.
This is the lowest number of cases confirmed in a day for the past three weeks. The last time an even slower increase was reported was on April 4, with only 76 additional cases.
The DOH earlier said the country’s 18 accredited laboratories can now conduct 4,500 coronavirus tests daily. Earlier this week, however, the capacity went down to 2,700 after the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine scaled down its operations due to 43 of its employees testing positive for COVID-19.
Meanwhile, 30 more people have recovered from the viral illness in the country, for a total of 792 recoveries.
The DOH explained it takes around 13 days up to more than a month for patients to recover, depending on the severity of their symptoms.
To contain the spread of COVID-19, President Rodrigo Duterte has extended the enhanced community quarantine in the regions of Metro Manila, Central Luzon, and Calabarzon until May 15. The same stay-at-home orders and suspension of most work and mass transportation will also remain in effect in “high-risk” provinces or those with high number of COVID-19 cases.
The country reported its first COVID-19 case in late January, just a month after the outbreak began in Wuhan, China.
Worldwide, COVID-19 has infected more than 2.8 million and killed over 197,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 global tracker.
