PH’s active COVID-19 cases now 59,439 with 6,959 new infections

(FILE) A health worker in Ilocos Norte extracts a swab sample from a resident amid the rising COVID-19 cases there. (Photo courtesy of Ilocos Norte provincial government)

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health reported an additional 6,959 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, bringing the total active cases in the country to 59,439.

The DOH said this is 4.4 percent of all the 1,353,220 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country. Of the active cases, 95.7 percent are mild and asymptomatic.

The new daily COVID-19 cases for June range from 5,000 to 8,000, with an average of 6,485 new infections reported per day.

Meanwhile, another 9,407 people have recovered from COVID-19, raising the recovery count to 1,270,243 or 93.9 percent of the tally.

An additional 153 patients have died of COVID-19, bringing the number of fatalities to 23,538, or 1.74 percent of all the cases.

On the positivity rate, the DOH said 11.5 percent of the 50,104 people who were tested were found positive for the coronavirus last Thursday.

The DOH said all laboratories were operational on Thursday but six laboratories were not able to submit their data. Based on data in the last 14 days, the six non-reporting labs contribute, on average, 3.5 percent of samples tested and 3.9 percent of positive individuals.

Fifteen duplicates, including 12 recoveries, were removed from the total case count. The DOH also said 170 cases previously tagged as recoveries have been validated to be active cases and 97 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.

/MUF