Healthcare workers in Ilocos Sur get swab samples to test individuals for COVID-19. (Photo courtesy of Vigan city government)
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines confirmed 564 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, with a positivity rate of only 1.7 percent out of over 34,000 individuals who were tested for the coronavirus.
According to the Department of Health (DOH), the 564 new cases, 694 more recoveries, and 40 additional deaths placed the country’s current active cases to 15,188. New COVID-19 cases were recorded to be less than 1,000 for nine straight days.
There have been 2,833,473 confirmed cases of the disease in the country since the start of the pandemic. A total of 2,769,533 of these patients have already recovered and 48,752 have died.
The case fatality rate is currently at 1.72 percent and the recovery rate is 97.7 percent. Meanwhile, the active cases compose 0.5 percent of the tally.
Of the active cases, 51.6 percent are either mild or asymptomatic. Specifically, 715 patients are asymptomatic, 7,126 have mild symptoms, 3,817 have moderate infections, 2,463 are under severe condition, and 1,067 are under critical status.
Some 27 percent of intensive care unit beds, 25 percent of isolation beds, 14 percent of ward beds, and 16 percent of ventilators are currently being used, based on DOH data.
According to the health department, the 1.7 percent positivity rate was from 34,918 individuals who got tested for the coronavirus on Tuesday.
The new cases, however, do not include data from two testing laboratories that were closed on Tuesday and three laboratories that failed to submit data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System.
Meanwhile, the DOH removed from the case count six duplicates and 123 cases found to have tested negative and reclassified 32 recoveries as deaths after final validation.
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