Health workers and frontliners receive their 2nd dose of the Sinovac vaccine against COVID-19 held at Marikina Elementary School covered court, Marikina City on Tuesday, May 4, 2021. Niño Jesus Orbeta/Philippine Daily Inquirer
MANILA, Philippines — The country now has 62,713 active COVID-19 cases as the Department of Health (DOH) reports 5,685 new infections.
As of Wednesday, the country has already recorded a total of 1,073,555 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Of this number, 5.8 percent are active cases, and of the active cases, 96.2 percent are mild and asymptomatic.
The DOH said the low number of COVID-19 cases reported this Wednesday is due to the low number of samples received by laboratories last Saturday and Sunday.
Meanwhile, the DOH also logged 8,961 more patients who have recovered, raising the number of recoveries to 993,042. Recoveries represent 92.5 percent of the case count.
There were also 178 deaths, bringing the number of fatalities to 17,800. Deaths make up 1.66 percent of the overall tally.
According to the DOH, 14.9 percent of the 33,449 individuals who were tested were found positive for the virus.
The health department said 22 duplicate entries, including 17 recoveries, were removed from the case count, while 112 cases initially tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths following validation.
The DOH added that all laboratories were operational on May 3 while five laboratories were not able to submit their data.
On Monday, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said that the DOH has noted a “slowly” declining trend of new COVID-19 cases. She also said that there has been a “downward trend” of hospital admissions but the decongestion is not yet at a “significant” level.
Data from the DOH showed that a total of 2,065,235 COVID-19 vaccine doses have so far been administered in the country as of May 4. Of this number, 1,744,649 were administered as the first dose while 320,586 were provided as the second dose.