MANILA, Philippines — New coronavirus disease cases in the Philippines are approaching the 100,000-mark as the Department of Health (DOH) reported a new record-high 8,773 additional cases of COVID-19 on Thursday.
According to DOH, the recorded new infections pushed nationwide active cases to 99,891 as of March 25 – the highest following the detection of more transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variants – as the country’s total case count reached 693,048 since the pandemic reached Philippine shores in 2020.
The DOH, moreover, said 574 more recovered from the respiratory ailment caused by the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, driving sum recoveries to 580,062, although an additional 56 patients died of the disease and raised the death toll to 13,095.
According to the health agency, the latest tally of active cases represents 14.4 percent of the total case count while recoveries account for 83.7 percent and deaths, 1.89 percent.
DOH also said that 98% of the active cases are patients with mild symptoms and asymptomatic patients.
At the same time, 36 duplicate entries, including 23 recovered cases, were removed from the DOH data while seven cases that were previously tagged as recovered patients were also reclassified as deaths after final validation.
The latest report of DOH excludes data from six laboratories that were not able to submit their statistics to the COVID-19 Document Repository System on Wednesday.
The additional COVID-19 cases reported Thursday were higher than the March 22-announced record of 8,019 new infections.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said on Wednesday night that the country has so far secured donations of 1,525,600 doses of COVID-19 vaccines from China and the global vaccine sharing pool COVAX Facility. Vaccines procured by the government have yet to arrive even as the country faces rapid infection surges.
Duque also said the current supply of vaccines in the country is only enough to cover 30 percent of the 1.7 million healthcare workers in the country.
A total of 508,332 individuals have been vaccinated against COVID-19 as of March 23.