PH logs over 20K COVID cases anew; active infections now at 188,108

Test tube, coronavirus positive. STOCK PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — The country’s new COVID-19 infections rose to over 20,000 again for the second consecutive day, as the Department of Health (DOH) recorded 20,336 additional cases on Friday, September 17.

These additional infections pushed the active case count to 188,108. The active case count represents 8.1 percent of the total confirmed COVID-19 cases, which is now at 2,324,475.

Meanwhile, only 10,028 new recoveries were tallied.  Total recoveries on the other hand are at 2,100,039.

The 20,336 new infections came on the heels of Thursday’s 21,261. In the past few days, new infections went below 20,000 particularly last Tuesday and Wednesday where DOH recorded 18,056 and 16,989 new cases.

Also, despite the slight increase in testing compared to a month prior — as 75,766 tests were conducted from September 15 — the positivity still remained high at a staggering 26.6 percent.

In terms of COVID-19 bed capacity in the National Capital Region, 79 percent of intensive care unit beds are being utilized while 64 percent of isolation beds are occupied.  A total of 74 percent of ward beds and 62 percent of the ventilators are also being used by patients.

All over the country, 77 percent of ICU beds for COVID-19 patients are occupied, while 68 percent of isolation beds are being used.

Most of the patients or 87.6 percent of active cases have still exhibited mild symptoms only, while 8.1 percent remained asymptomatic.  At least 1.3 percent of the patients currently have severe symptoms while 0.6 percent are in critical condition.

DOH said that four laboratories were not even able to submit their data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System even if all laboratories were operational last September 15.

Based on the data from the last 14 days, the two laboratories that were not able to submit data accounted for 0.7 percent of all the samples tested, and 0.6 percent of all the positive cases.

There were also 54 duplicate entries removed from the total case count, of which 41 are recoveries.  Also, 176 patients previously tagged as recovered were reclassified as deaths.

EDV