COVID-19 active cases in PH leap to 39,974 as 10,775 more contract virus

MANILA, Philippines — The number of people in the country currently sick with COVID-19 jumped to 39,974 on Wednesday as the government recorded the fresh infection of 10,775 more.

Based on the latest report of the Department of Health (DOH), the nationwide COVID-19 case count increased to 2,871,745 with the additional new cases which nearly doubled from Tuesday’s report.

The daily rise reported Wednesday is also the highest recorded in the country since October 12, 2021, when 12,159 fresh infections were logged.

The DOH also reported Wednesday that 605 patients recovered from severe respiratory illness COVID-19 while 58 others succumbed to the disease.

Since 2020, 96.8 percent of the overall case count or more than 2.78 million have recovered from COVID-19 while 51,662 patients died.

READ: PH logs 12,159 new cases of COVID-19; active cases now down to 90,927

According to the DOH, 10,688 of the new cases reported on Wednesday occurred within the past 14 days from December 23 to January 5.

The National Capital Region (NCR) was the region with the most number of new cases in the recent two weeks, accounting for 7,420 patients, the DOH said.

NCR was followed by Region 4A where 1,719 new cases were reported and Region 3 with 798 new cases, it also noted.

“Of the 58 deaths, 8 occurred in December 2021 (14%), 8 in November 2021 (14%), 24 in October 2021 (41%), 15 in September 2021 (26%), and 3 in August 2021 (5%) due to late encoding of death information to COVIDKaya,” the DOH explained.

“This issue is currently being coordinated with the Epidemiology and Surveillance Units to ensure information is up to date,” it added.

Meanwhile, the DOH said 39 duplicates were removed from the total case count. Of these, 35 were labeled as recoveries.

The DOH also said that 110 cases were found to have tested negative and have been removed from the total case count. These 110 were tagged as recoveries.

Moreover, 57 cases that were previously labeled as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation, according to the health agency.

The DOH likewise said all laboratories were operational on January 3.

However, it noted that nine laboratories were not able to submit their data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System (CDRS).

“Based on data in the last 14 days, the 9 labs contribute, on average, 2.2% of samples tested and 5.3% of positive individuals,” the DOH added.

KGA