MANILA, Philippines — An additional 39 people infected with the new virus have recovered, according to the Department of Health (DOH), even as the number of COVID-19 cases in the country increased to 6,710 on Wednesday, April 22.
DOH said the total count of people who were able to recover from the disease is now at 693 while the death toll still climbed to 446 with the documented deaths of nine more patients.
This is so far the lowest number of new cases recorded this week, DOH also noted, however explaining that this is due to the “scaling down” of laboratory operations of the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM), which has 43 of its employees affected by the novel coronavirus or SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.
DOH earlier said that the rate of spread of COVID-19 in the country has slowed down as its doubling time averaged at five days from the previous three days.
But it also admitted that it is still too early to tell whether the epidemic curve in the country has already flattened. The entire Luzon was placed under an enhanced community quarantine to control the transmission of the new virus. The lockdown was imposed in March and will last until April 30 although the national government is still deliberating on whether to extend it further or just modify.
DOH said that COVID-19 cases are largely concentrated in Metro Manila and that 30 provinces in the country either have few or no cases, or have a slow transmission of the virus.
Globally, SARS-CoV-2 has so far infected over 2.5 million people and killed over 177,600 while more than 690,600 managed to recover from the deadly respiratory ailment.