MANILA, Philippines — The country recorded 13,827 additional COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, taking the total active infections to 145,562, or 7.3 percent of all confirmed cases.
This is significantly lower than the record-high 22,366 fresh cases logged on Monday. However, the Department of Health (DOH) clarified that the low number of cases on Tuesday is due to the low laboratory output last Sunday.
According to DOH, there are now 1,989,857 total confirmed cases in the Philippines since the pandemic began. Of this number, 91 percent or 1,810,847 have already recovered. The recoveries include 16,759 more patients who have recovered from the disease.
Meanwhile, another 118 patients have succumbed to COVID-19 complications, taking the death toll to 33,448, representing 1.68 percent of all confirmed cases.
On positivity rate, 25.4 percent of 49,187 people who were tested were found positive for coronavirus on Sunday.
All laboratories were operational on Sunday but eight were not able to submit their data on time. Based on data in the last two weeks, the eight labs contribute 0.9 percent of samples tested and 1.2 percent of positive individuals on average.
The DOH removed 172 duplicates, including 153 recoveries, from the total case count, while 37 cases initially tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.
The country is battling a renewed surge of COVID-19 cases due to the highly transmissible Delta variant. The World Health Organization has confirmed that the Delta variant is now the most dominant variant in the country and that community transmission of Delta is already evident.
COVID-19 cases are expected to reach their peak in mid-September, according to DOH.