PH logs over 12,000 new COVID-19 cases for 2nd straight day

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) reported 12,439 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday—the second straight day that the agency logged fresh infections over the 12,000-mark as the country assumes community transmission of the Delta variant.

According to DOH, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases also breached the 1.7 million mark following the detection of additional cases. In total, there are now 1,700,363 confirmed cases of the disease, of which 87,663 or 5.2 percent remain active cases.

Meanwhile, 6,090 more patients have recovered, raising the number of patients who have survived the disease to 1,583,161. However, 165 more patients have died, pushing the death count to 29,539.

The DOH said 22.5 percent of 57,016 people who were tested were found positive on Tuesday for the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.

Thursday’s number of new COVID-19 cases are still the highest in four months. On Wednesday, the DOH reported 12,021 additional COVID-19 cases. The last time the department recorded new cases that are over the 12,000 marks was on April 10 with 12,674 new cases. It was in April when the country saw a record-high spike in coronavirus infections.

According to DOH, all laboratories were operational on Tuesday but two labs were not able to submit their data on time. The two non-reporting laboratories contribute 0.2 percent of samples tested and 0.1 percent of positive individuals on average based on data in the last 14 days.

Meanwhile, the DOH also removed 116 duplicates, including 108 recoveries, from the total case count. Three cases initially tagged as recoveries were also validated as active cases while 85 cases that were tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after validation.

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