Daily COVID tally stays low, even with reporting backlog

The Department of Health (DOH) reported 168 COVID-19 cases on Tuesday—the lowest since the 163 on May 22 last year.

The new count brought total infections to 2,837,719 since the start of the pandemic.

The DOH said there were actually only 9 new cases, whereas the other 159—95 percent of Tuesday’s reported infections—were from the past two weeks.

The department has time and again noted backlogs and “late encoding” in its updates on the country’s COVID-19 tally. This is again the case with the latest fatalities.

Ten more people died, but one of these fatalities was from as long ago as May last year. The other deaths were between August and December this year.

With these numbers, the death toll is now at 50,794, the DOH said.

Testing results

The department noted further that 24 of its testing laboratories have either closed or were unable to submit their results.

Of those labs, 13 could not transmit their data because of Typhoon “Odette” last week, which disrupted power and internet connectivity.

There were 9,384 active cases recorded on Tuesday, of which 508 were asymptomatic; 3,289 were mild; 3,406 were moderate; 1,804 were severe; and 377 were critical.

Out of 22,964 tests conducted on Sunday, according to the latest bulletin, 0.9 percent or 207 were found positive for the novel coronavirus. This indicated a positivity rate of below 1 percent for the fourth consecutive day.

Hospital capacity across the country remained high, with only 22 percent of intensive care unit (ICU) beds, 23 percent of isolation beds, 11 percent of ward beds and 11 percent of ventilators currently in use.

Decline in NCR

In the National Capital Region (NCR), coronavirus cases continued to decline to about 79 daily in the past week, according to the independent monitoring team OCTA Research.

The average daily attack rate is still very low at 0.55 per 100,000 population, while the reproduction number or rate of infection is at 0.48.

OCTA also noted that ICU occupancy remained very low in most cities in Metro Manila, while the positivity rate was 0.6 percent of the average 18,000 tests conducted daily in the capital region during the past week.

According to the DOH bulletin, only 21 percent of ICU beds in NCR, 20 percent of isolation beds, 17 percent of ward beds and 12 percent of ventilators are currently in use.