FILE PHOTO: Colorized scanning electron micrograph of an apoptotic cell (greenish-brown) heavily infected with SARS-COV-2 virus particles (pink), also known as novel coronavirus, isolated from a patient sample. Image captured and color-enhanced at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH/Handout via REUTERS.
MANILA, Philippines — The country set a new record for the largest single-day increase in COVID-19 cases after the Department of Health registered 15,310 new cases on Friday.
However, the DOH clarified that this figure includes the 3,790 case backlogs caused by technical problems in the COVID-19 database, which resulted in a lower-than-usual COVID-19 count of 6,128 new infections last Wednesday.
A day before that or on Tuesday, DOH said that there were 9,296 cases; on Thursday, there were 8,920 infections, placing the Wednesday numbers out of the trend.
“On March 31, 2021, the DOH reported only 6,128 new cases due to COVIDKaya system issue. After system checks, validation, and deduplication were made, 3,709 additional cases were confirmed,” DOH said in its COVID-19 bulletin.
“All system issues have been resolved and were put in place to prevent the same issue from happening again,” it added.
If the backlog is subtracted from the total count, it would yield 11,601 new cases on Friday — still a new record in terms of daily increase in cases.
With these new cases, active infections zoomed to 153,809. Another 434 recovered patients brought the number of recoveries to 604,368, while 17 new deaths pushed the death toll to 13,320.
All in all, the country has 771,497 confirmed COVID-19 patients since the pandemic reached the country.
Most of the patients, or 96.3 percent of active cases, have still exhibited mild symptoms only, while 2.4 percent were asymptomatic. At least 0.5 percent of the patients currently have severe symptoms, while another 0.5 percent are in critical condition.
Of the 35,143 tests conducted on Wednesday, DOH said that 20.7 percent tested positive. In terms of COVID-19 bed capacity in the National Capital Region which is grappling with a surge in cases, 78 percent of intensive care unit beds have been utilized while 71 percent of isolation beds are occupied.
Despite the already high number of new cases, DOH said that seven laboratories were unable to submit their data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System (CDRS) on Thursday.
Also, 12 duplicate entries were removed from the total case count, of which nine are recoveries. Five recoveries were also reclassified as deaths after the final validation.