MANILA, Philippines — An additional 29,828 new cases of COVID-19 and 36,763 recoveries were recorded by the Department of Health (DOH) on Sunday.
This is the second highest number of recoveries recorded since the uptick in cases began, which is believed to be caused by the holiday season and the spread of the more transmissible Omicron variant of concern.
With this, active cases slightly decreased to 273,580 from Saturday’s 280,619. Total confirmed cases, meanwhile, are now at 3,417,216 while total recoveries are at 3,090,164.
Positivity rate, on the other hand, is at 41.8 percent out of the 69,014 tests conducted on Jan. 21.
Based on the DOH’s report, 98 percent or 29,237 of the new infections were logged within the last 14 days. It showed Metro Manila as the top region that posted the highest number of new cases at 5,178 new cases (18 percent) in the recent two weeks, followed by Region 4-A with 4,227 (14 percent) and Region 3 with 2,787 (10 percent).
Of the active cases, DOH said 98.2 percent currently suffer mild or asymptomatic cases; specifically, 260,399 individuals suffer mild cases, 8,371 are asymptomatic, 3,006 moderate, 1,496 severe, and 308 critical.
The DOH said it also recorded the deaths of 67 coronavirus-hit people, increasing the total death count to 53,472.
The health agency likewise said that 136 duplicates were removed from the total case count, 78 of which were recoveries and one was a death.
Moreover, the DOH said that 22 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.