FILE PHOTO A volunteer medical frontliner from the Office of the Vice President’s Swab Cab administers a nose swab on a suspected coronavirus patient. Image from Facebook / VP Leni Robredo
MANILA, Philippines — The weekly load of new COVID-19 infections further decreased as the Department of Health (DOH) registered 19,262 infections from August 22 to 26.
DOH’s weekly data showed a daily average of 2,752, 19% lower than the week before (3,412).
Meanwhile, 110 or 0.62 percent of this new batch of weekly cases were tagged as severe or critical, bringing the active number of severe or critical cases to 807.
The country’s COVID-19 death count went up by another 316 deaths. Of these, 113 happened in August and the rest were from June 2020 to July 2022.
Non-ICU-bed utilization rate, meanwhile, decreased to 28.1 percent from 30.2 percent, while the ICU-bed utilization rate also decreased from 27 percent to 24.9 percent.
Fully-vaccinated individuals increased to 72,476,610 (92.80% of the target population) following the vaccination of 166,461 people last week.
On the other hand, individuals with booster shots now total 17,843,348 after 424,207 additional individuals were inoculated in the same period.
Based on the DOH’s COVID-19 tracker in its website, as of August 28, active COVID-19 infections nationwide currently number 28,525.
COVID-19 cases have leveled off across the country, but DOH warns against becoming “complacent.”
Critical and severe cases are rising, with 60 percent unvaccinated or partially vaccinated individuals.