Total COVID-19 cases in PH breach 1-M mark with 8,929 new infections

MANILA, Philippines — The country officially breached the one million mark of confirmed total COVID-19 cases (1,006,428) on Monday, April 26, as the Department of Health (DOH) recorded 8,929 new COVID-19 infections.

However, the country’s active case count has seen a continuous decline, down to 74,623 — lower than almost 2,500 cases since Sunday.  This is mainly due to the 11,333 recoveries registered on Monday, which brings the total recoveries to 914,952.

But 70 new deaths also brought the death toll to 16,853.

Most of the patients, or 95.4 percent of active cases, have still exhibited mild symptoms only, while 1.4 percent were asymptomatic.  At least 1.3 percent of the patients currently have severe symptoms, while 1.0 percent are in critical condition.

Of the 45,863 tests conducted from April 24, DOH said that 16.7 percent tested positive.  In terms of COVID-19 bed capacity in the National Capital Region which is still reeling from the recent surge, 71 percent of intensive care unit beds have been utilized while 57 percent of isolation beds are occupied.

DOH said that it removed 23 duplicate entries from the total case count, of which 18 are recoveries. Also, 27 cases previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified to deaths after further validation.

Two laboratories were not operational last Saturday, while nine others were not able to submit their data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System (CDRS).