Record-high for 2021: 5,404 new COVID-19 infections bring active cases to 53,479

MANILA, Philippines — A total of 5,404 new COVID-19 infections recorded on Monday pushed the number of active cases to 53,479, the Department of Health (DOH) said.

According to DOH’s COVID-19 bulletin, the total number of confirmed cases in the country is now at 626,893, with 560,577 of them tagged as recoveries.

Eight new deaths meanwhile brought the death toll to 12,837

Monday’s new confirmed cases are the highest for 2021, and it is also higher than the infections last August 26 — when Metro Manila was also experiencing a surge — which were 5,227 cases.

Most of the patients or 92.4 percent of active cases only experienced mild symptoms, while 4.0 percent were asymptomatic.  But DOH data also showed that 1.4 percent of the patients currently have severe symptoms while another 1.4 percent are in critical condition.

DOH said that nine duplicate entries were removed from the total case count, three of which were classified as recoveries.  Three other recoveries were also reclassified as deaths after final validation.

Despite the high numbers, five laboratories were not able to submit their data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System (CDRS) on Sunday, March 14, 2021.

JE