DOH registers 25 more COVID-19 deaths; PH death toll at 51,570

(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 Department of Health (DOH) on Sunday said it recorded 25 more deaths due to COVID-19 complications, bringing the country’s death toll to 51,570.

Only 7 deaths or 28 percent of the new fatalities were recorded in December. The DOH clarified that the rest were deaths that were recorded in previous months: 2 in November, one on October, 4 in September, 6 in August, one on June, 3 in April, and another one in March.

The delays in the reporting of COVID-19 deaths were still due to the late encoding of death information to DOH’s COVIDKaya, the DOH said.

The current death toll still accounts for 1.81 percent of the total 2,851,931 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country.

Active infections, on the other hand, are now at 21,418, after the DOH reported its highest number of daily cases since Oct. 24.

The positivity rate also jumped to 19.6 percent, almost 10 times higher than the rate the country had in the previous week — 2 percent on Dec. 26.

Health care utilization rate nationwide, meanwhile, slightly increased based on DOH’s data,  as 22 percent of ICU beds, 20 percent of isolation beds, 14 percent of ward beds, and 12 percent of ventilators currently in use nationwide.

The same goes for the utilization rate in Metro Manila which has notably increased with occupied ICU beds currently at 27 percent, isolation beds at 23 percent, ward beds at 26 percent and 15 percent for ventilators.

As of writing, worldwide deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 tracker, number 5,440,653, while infections are at 289,293,483.

/MUF