PH registers 16,953 new cases of COVID-19; total cases at 3,545,680

MANILA, Philippines — A total of 16,953 new cases of COVID-19 and 27,638 recoveries were recorded by the Department of Health (DOH) on Sunday.

This is the lowest number of daily infections recorded since Jan. 5, where there were 10,775 new cases, and slightly lower than Saturday’s 17,382 cases.

Meanwhile, with the higher number of recoveries, active cases further decreased to 202,864, from Saturday’s 213,587. Total confirmed cases, meanwhile, are now at 3,545,680 while total recoveries are at 3,288,925.

Positivity rate, on the other hand, is at 31.4 percent out of the 56,078 tests conducted on Jan. 28, also the lowest rate since Jan. 4 (26.20 percent) and only slightly lower than Jan. 5’s 31.7 percent.

Based on the DOH’s report, 98 percent or 16,647 of the new infections were logged within the last 14 days. It showed Region 6 as the top region that posted the highest number of new cases at 2,000 new cases (12 percent) in the recent two weeks, followed by Metro Manila with 1,967 (12 percent) and Region 4-A with 1,871 (11 percent).

The uptick in COVID-19 cases can be traced during the start of the year which was believed to be caused by the holiday revelry and the spread of the more transmissible Omicron variant of concern.

Of the active cases, DOH said 97.5 percent currently suffer mild or asymptomatic cases, specifically, 186,550 individuals suffer mild cases, 11,277 are asymptomatic, 3,176 moderate, 1,534 severe, and 327 critical.

The DOH said it also recorded the deaths of 20 coronavirus-hit people increasing the total death count to 53,891.

The health agency likewise said that 69 duplicates were removed from the total case count, 43 of which were recoveries.

Moreover, the DOH said that 8 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.