(FILE) Workers in protective suits, used due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, wait outside a crematorium facility as the cremation process takes some two hours in Manila on April 29, 2020. (Photo by Maria TAN / AFP)
MANILA, Philippines — The country has recorded 133 more deaths due to COVID-19, raising the death toll to 51,373, the latest bulletin from the Department of Health (DOH) showed.
However, only 4 or 3 percent of the new deaths occurred in December, said the DOH. The rest of the deaths were backlogs of which six occurred on November, 14 on October, 20 on September, 23 in August, six in July, five in June, nine on May, 21 on April, 15 in March, and 1 each in February and January, 2021.
Eight deaths also came from 2020, 2 on October, 3 in September, 2 in August, and 1 as far back as July.
The department explained that delays in deaths were due to the late encoding of death information to DOH’s COVIDKaya.
The current death toll, meanwhile, still accounts for 1.81 percent of the total 2,841,260 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country.
Active infections, on the other hand, are now at 11,772, after the DOH reported its highest number of daily cases since Nov. 21.
The positivity rate also increased to 6.6 percent, this is now above the World Health Organization’s threshold of 5 percent — which indicates controlled transmission of the SARS-CoV-2.
Relatively low health care utilization rate also remains, however, a slight increase should be noted as 20 percent of ICU beds, 23 percent of isolation beds, 11 percent of ward beds, and 11 percent of ventilators currently in use nationwide.
The same goes for Metro Manila, where occupied ICU beds are currently at 24 percent, isolation beds at 21 percent, ward beds at 19 percent, and 15 percent for ventilators.
As of writing, worldwide deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 tracker, number 5,422,643, while infections are at 284,591,185.