67 more deaths bring PH COVID-19 death toll to 53,472 — DOH

MANILA, Philippines — An additional 67 patients succumbed to COVID-19 complications, said the Department of Health (DOH) on Sunday, increasing the country’s death toll to 53,472.

According to the DOH, 49 of these deaths occurred in January.

The rest were backlogs from last year with 1 death in December, 2 in November, 8 in October, 4 in September, 1 in August, 1 in July and another 1 in June.

These delays are still due to the late encoding of death information to DOH’s COVIDKaya, which DOH said is being coordinated with the Epidemiology and Surveillance Units “to ensure information is up to date.”

The current death toll accounts for 1.56 percent of the total 3,417,216 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country.

Active infections, on the other hand, currently sit at 273,580 after the DOH reported 29,828 new cases of COVID-19 and 37,763 new recoveries.

Health care utilization rate nationwide based on DOH’s data, meanwhile, is at 48 percent of ICU beds, 46 percent of isolation beds, 52 percent of ward beds, and 27 percent of ventilators are currently in use nationwide.

Meanwhile in Metro Manila, 51 percent of ICU beds are currently in use, 52 percent in isolation beds, 53 percent in ward beds and 24 percent in ventilators.

As of writing, worldwide deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 tracker, are at 5,591,734, while infections are at 349,166,308.

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