MANILA, Philippines — Detected COVID-19 cases continued their downward trend, three years since the first coronavirus case was detected in the country.
Over the past week, the number of people who tested positive for the virus every day fell by 35 percent, to a daily average of 270 from 419 the previous week.
The Department of Health (DOH) said out of the 1,891 new cases confirmed by laboratory tests, only one was in severe or critical condition.
According to the DOH, 432 COVID-19 patients who are severely or critically ill are undergoing treatment in hospitals.
There are currently 10,587 patients still infected with the virus. Of this total, 3,879, or 36 percent, are admitted to hospitals while the majority are presumed to be recovering at home.
After three years of the pandemic, the DOH is still processing a huge backlog of reported COVID-19 deaths.
The official death toll rose to 65,694 after the health agency confirmed 104 more deaths due to COVID-19, many of which occurred more than two years ago.
The DOH confirmed the country’s first case of COVID-19 on Jan. 30, 2020, in a Chinese female tourist who arrived about a week earlier from Wuhan, China.
The tourist’s husband died on Feb. 1, becoming the first COVID-19 fatality in the country and outside of China where the first confirmed case was reported.
Since then, confirmed COVID-19 cases have reached 4,071,963 in the Philippines, which has around 115 million population.