Photo from the office of Manila City Mayor
MANILA, Philippines —In recent months, COVID-19 has killed more people every day in the country, most of whom were unvaccinated, said Maria Rosario Vergeire, the Department of Health’s officer-in-charge on Friday.
“There’s this increase in the number of deaths over these past months,” Vergeire said in a press briefing.
Vergeire said that the country is just averaging one death per day in June, but the daily average of deaths in July and mid-August has increased.
The average number of daily deaths in July was eight, which increased to nine in mid-August.
Unvaccinated people also accounted for the majority of deaths in July and August.
“Upon analyzing our data, noong tinignan natin (what we have observed) from July 1 to August 14… we found that 63 percent of these deaths were those who were not vaccinated,” Vergeire pointed out.
As of Thursday, the country has reported 61,221 deaths or 1.61 percent of the total caseload, which stands at 3,802,103, according to the DOH COVID-19 tracker.
There were also 36,115 active cases, while 3,747,372 survived the coronavirus.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday said deaths globally due to COVID-19 have increased by 35 percent over the past four weeks, with 15,000 people dying from respiratory disease.