The country’s COVID-19 positivity rate slightly increased for the third straight day as Metro Manila again recorded most of the 433 new infections, the Department of Health (DOH) said on Saturday.
The DOH said the 433 new cases were part of the 25,779 individuals tested as of Dec. 23, resulting in a positivity rate of 1.6 percent.
While the figure was still well within the benchmark of 5 percent set by the World Health Organization, it was higher than the positivity rate—the percentage of infections based on the tests conducted—of 1.4 percent recorded on Friday.
On Thursday, the DOH recorded a positivity rate of 1.1 percent, up from .9 percent a day before.
The DOH said 404 of the new cases were recorded in the past two weeks, with Metro Manila having most of the fresh infections at 178.
The DOH also logged 369 new recoveries, bringing to 2,777,818 the total number of survivors since the pandemic broke out. Of the country’s 2,838,381 recorded infections, only 9,376 remained active cases.
Most of these were mild (3,430) and moderate (3,337) cases. These were followed by severe (1,777), asymptomatic (458) and critical (374) cases.