COVID-19 cases in PH soar to 83,673 as DOH records 1,678 new infections

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) on Tuesday reported an additional 1,678 COVID-19 infections, driving the Philippines’ total caseload to 83,673.

DOH said 55,109 of the total count are considered active cases, and that Metro Manila topped the list of areas with new COVID-19 cases with 698, followed by Laguna with 218, Cebu with 100, Cavite with 87, and Davao del Sur with 33.

Meanwhile, 173 more patients managed to recover from the respiratory illness caused by SARS-CoV-2, increasing nationwide recoveries to 26,617, according to DOH.

Four new deaths have likewise been logged, raising the country’s COVID-19 death toll to 1,947, DOH also said.

But on Monday, the total number of fatalities was 1,945. DOH explained that from this tally, two have been removed since it was later validated that they recovered and did not die from the disease. The two cases have been included in Tuesday’s DOH report on the number of recovered COVID-19 patients.

Also, DOH clarified that it discovered 34 duplicates in its data, including two recovered cases that were subsequently removed from the sum tally.

Further, DOH said it found out that 11 cases turned out false positives and thus, were excluded from the country’s COVID-19 total count.

KGA