PH’s active COVID-19 cases swell to 175,470 with 17,964 new infections

FILE PHOTO: Colorized scanning electron micrograph of an apoptotic cell (red) infected with SARS-COV-2 virus particles (yellow), also known as novel coronavirus, isolated from a patient sample. Image captured at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH/Handout via REUTERS.

MANILA, Philippines — The country’s number of active COVID-19 cases swelled to 175,470 on Friday as the Department of Health (DOH) reports 17,964 new cases of the disease.

According to DOH, the active cases now comprise eight percent of the 2,179,770 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country since the pandemic started.

Of the tally, 1,969,401 have recovered, including the 9,067 additional patients who have recovered. However, another 168 patients have died, taking the death toll to 34,899 or 1.6 percent of the total.

The DOH, however, has yet to explain the reason for the lower number of new cases logged on Thursday despite the 28.9 percent positivity rate among the 76,562 people who were tested for the virus on Tuesday. To note, the department has been reporting over 20,000 single-day case increases of COVID-19 recently.

All laboratories were operational on Tuesday but four were not able to submit their data on time. The non-reporting labs contribute 2.1 percent of samples tested and 2.4 percent of positive individuals on average in the last two weeks.

Meanwhile, 86 duplicates, including 74 recoveries and two deaths, were removed from the total case count, and 79 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation, according to DOH.

JPV