New COVID-19 cases exceed 3,000 for 4th consecutive day

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) on Monday logged 3,356 additional COVID-19 cases in the country, making it the fourth consecutive day that new cases breached the 3,000-mark.

The new cases brought the total number of cases to 597,763, 39,330 of which are active cases.

Of the active cases, 91.2% are mild, 4.0% are asymptomatic, 2.0% are critical, 2.0% are severe, and 0.83% are moderate cases.

The health department also recorded 61 new recoveries and five additional fatalities, bringing the total to 545,912 and 12,521, respectively.

Five duplicates were removed from the total case count, two of which are recoveries.

Six laboratories were not able to submit their data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System on Sunday, March 7.

The DOH has observed an increase in the number of additional coronavirus cases as the country recorded a total of 118 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2 from the United Kingdom and 58 cases of the B.1.135 variant from South Africa.

The DOH earlier said that both variants have demonstrated increased transmissibility of the virus, with the South African variant also having a potential impact on vaccine efficacy.

The Octa Research team earlier warned that the Philippines may see 5,000 to 6,000 new COVID-19 cases per day by the end of March.

“[B]ased on the current reproduction number, NCR is projected to have 2,000 new COVID-19 cases per day by March 21 and 3,000 new cases per day by March 31, while the country is projected to have 5,000 to 6,000 new cases per day by the end of March,” it said.

JE