MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) on Sunday said that 20 more individuals succumbed to COVID-19 complications, increasing the country’s death toll to 53,891.
According to the DOH, 16 of these deaths occurred in January. The rest were backlogs from last year with 1 death in October, 1 in September, 1 in August, and another 1 in July.
The 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 latest death toll currently accounts for 1.52 percent of the total 3,545,680 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country.
Active infections, on the other hand, currently sit at 202,864 after the DOH reported 16,963 new cases of COVID-19 and 27,638 new recoveries.
Health care utilization rate nationwide based on DOH’s data, meanwhile, is at 46 percent of ICU beds, 47 percent of isolation beds, 49 percent of ward beds, and 25 percent of ventilators are currently in use nationwide.
In Metro Manila, 39 percent of ICU beds are currently in use, 37 percent in isolation beds, 42 percent in ward beds and 23 percent in ventilators.
As of writing, worldwide deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 tracker, number 5,659,441, while infections are at 372,875,793.