DOH clarifies: Deaths in COVID bulletin include fatalities from previous months

MANILA, Philippines — The deaths being reported in the daily COVID-19 case bulletins include fatalities from the previous months, the Department of Health (DOH) clarified on Saturday amid the high number of deaths being added to the tally per day.

“As of yesterday, November 5, we have already reported 49 deaths [for the month] and we are averaging 10 deaths per day,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said at the Laging Handa public briefing.

She said that the peak of deaths was in September when an average of 193 patients died per day amid the surge in COVID cases driven by the Delta variant during that time.

“Hindi po lahat ng inirereport natin bawat araw ay nangyayari for this specific month. Mayroon pong mga porsyento na nangyari noong Oktubre, Setyembre, noong Agosto dahil vilavalidate po po natin ‘yan,” Vergeire explained.

(Not all deaths we report per day happened this month. Part of it happened in October, September, and August because we validate these.)

“Yesterday’s number of deaths, yung 200 plus, hindi po lahat ‘yun ay nangyari noong Nobyembre. Nangyari po ‘yung iba last month. ‘Yung iba September or August because we are still validating whatever the local governments are providing us as data,” she added.

(Not all of the 200 deaths reported yesterday happened in November. Some of them happened last month, in September or August because we are still validating whatever data the local governments are providing us.)

Before this, the DOH earlier reported that an average of 73 patients died per day in October.

As of Friday, a total of 44,085 patients have died out of the 2.79 million individuals in the country who were confirmed to have had COVID.

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