82 additional deaths bring COVID-19 death toll to 52,736

FILE PHOTO: Health workers attend to patients inside the emergency room of a Cavite hospital in August last year. The hospital had reached full capacity at that time. RICHARD A. REYES/INQUIRER

MANILA, Philippines — A total of 82 more individuals succumbed to COVID-19 complications, said the Department of Health (DOH) on Thursday, increasing the country’s death toll to 52,726.

The DOH said that 37 of these deaths occurred in January, which is the highest number recorded in a single month this year.

The rest were backlogs from last year with 5 deaths in December, 2 in November, 6 in October, 13 in September, 4 in August, 2 in June, 1 in May, 7 in April, 2 in March, 2 in January, and another one as far back as April, 2020.

These delays in reported deaths are still due to the late encoding of death information to DOH’s COVIDKaya.

The death toll, meanwhile, currently accounts for 1.71 percent of the total 3,092,409 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country.

Active infections, on the other hand, now sits at 237,387 after the DOH reported 34,021 new cases, which is another all-time high for the country.

Health care utilization rate nationwide also continues to increase based on DOH’s data, as 45 percent of ICU beds, 46 percent of isolation beds, 45 percent of ward beds, and 19 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 58 percent, isolation beds at 54 percent, ward beds at 66 percent and 26 percent for ventilators.

As of writing, worldwide deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 tracker, number 5,513,774, while infections are at 316,922,586.

EDV