COVID-19 death toll in PH at 48,987 with 235 new deaths

MANILA, Philippines — The country’s COVID-19 death toll has reached 48,987 after the Department of Health (DOH) recorded 235 new deaths on Friday.

According to DOH’s numbers, the 48,987 deaths represent 1.73 percent of the total confirmed cases, which was at 2,833,878.

The latest death toll also includes 218 cases that were tagged as recoveries earlier and reclassified as deaths after final validation.

Earlier, DOH said that active infections in the country went down to 14,977, after only 544 cases were recorded on Friday.  It added that 734 more patients have recovered from the disease.

Of all the 14,977 cases, DOH said that 688 are asymptomatic, 7,166 have mild infections, 3,801 are moderate cases, 2,433 are severe cases, and 889 are critical cases.

Currently, the positivity rate in the country is at 1.8 percent out of the 32,908 tests done from December 1 (Wednesday).

According to DOH, two laboratories were not operational on November 30, while three others did not submit their data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System (CDRS).

Based on the data for the past 14 days, these laboratories contributed around 1.0 percent of all the samples tested, and 1.1 percent of the samples that came out positive.