UNPRECEDENTED Workers are finding themselves busier than ever at New Life Crematorium in Biñan City in Laguna, where families who have lost loved ones to COVID-19 have to wait for at least two days to secure a slot. —RICHARD A. REYES (file photo)
MANILA, Philippines — A total of 15 new deaths from COVID-19 complications has raised the country’s death toll to 52,150, the Department of Health (DOH) said on Sunday.
The majority or 11 of these deaths occurred in January, while the rest were late reports of deaths that happened in the previous months: 1 in December 2021, 1 in October, and 2 in September.
Delays in the reporting of the deaths were due to the late encoding of death information to DOH’s COVIDKaya.
The death toll currently accounts for 1.76 percent of the total 2,965,447 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country.
Active infections, on the other hand, now sit at 128,114 after the DOH reported its highest registered number of daily cases since the pandemic in the country began.
The positivity rate also jumped to 44 percent.
The health care utilization rate nationwide, meanwhile, has increased based on DOH’s data, as 35 percent of ICU beds, 39 percent of isolation beds, 38 percent of ward beds, and 18 percent of ventilators are currently in use nationwide.
The increase, however, is more notable in Metro Manila where occupied ICU beds are now currently at 52 percent, isolation beds at 50 percent, ward beds at 65 percent, and 26 percent for ventilators.
As of writing, worldwide deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 tracker, number 5,484,837, while infections are at 305,206,263.