COVID-19 cases breach 1,000 daily anew

The country logged nearly 1,300 new COVID-19 cases daily on the average last week, after seeing a marked decline to less than 1,000 daily cases during the first week of November.

The Department of Health (DOH) said an average of 1,296 people tested COVID-19 positive in laboratory tests from Nov. 7 to Nov. 13, which is 43 percent higher than the 907 daily detected cases the previous week.

Six out of the 9,069 confirmed infections last week were severe or in critical condition.

To date, 613 COVID-19 patients in hospitals are either severely or critically ill. There are 19,176 individuals who remain infected with the virus.

64,387 deaths

The DOH confirmed 113 more deaths due to COVID-19 mostly from the past four months, though some 17 deaths occurred either a year or two years ago.

This brought the official death toll to around 64,387 out of 4 million total confirmed cases.

Health-care utilization rate, or the percentage of allocated beds for COVID-19 patients that are in use, slightly rose but remained on low risk levels.

The DOH said 524 or 21.3 percent of COVID-19 intensive care unit (ICU) beds, and 5,363 or 25.8 percent of COVID-19 non-ICU beds were occupied. INQ