Only 4,393 new COVID cases logged due to low number of tests

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MANILA, Philippines — The country logged only 4,393 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday due to a lower number of tests in laboratories, according to the Department of Health (DOH).

With the additional patients, the active tally of COVID-19 is now at 53,642, which is only 1.9 percent of the total 2,765,672 confirmed cases of the disease. Of the active cases, 81.4 percent are mild or asymptomatic.

The DOH also recorded 8,470 more recoveries and 135 more deaths. Overall, 2,669,953 patients have already recovered while 135 have died.

According to DOH, 8.5 percent of 35,265 people who were tested were found positive for coronavirus on Sunday.

“The relatively low cases today is due to lower laboratory output last Sunday, October 24,” the health department noted.

On hospital occupancy, 53 percent of intensive care unit beds, 40 percent of isolation beds, 37 percent of ward beds, and 35 percent of ventilators are currently being used.

Meanwhile, the DOH removed from the total case count 28 duplicates, including 22 recoveries, and reclassified 97 recoveries as deaths after validation.

Five testing laboratories were not able to submit their data on time to the COVID-19 Document Repository System. The DOH said these laboratories contributed an average of 0.2 percent of samples tested and 0.3 percent of positive individuals in the last 14 days.

The Philippines is now classified as low risk for COVID-19 outbreak. The average daily attack rate nationwide has also gone down to the moderate risk of 5 per 100,000 population, according to DOH.

JPV