77 new COVID-19 casualties bring death toll to 28,093

(FILE) Workers in protective suits, used due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, wait outside a crematorium facility as the cremation process takes some two hours in Manila on April 29, 2020. (Photo by Maria TAN / AFP)

MANILA, Philippines — COVID-19 casualties in the country are now at 28,093 after the Department of Health (DOH) tallied 77 new deaths on Monday, August 2.

According to the DOH’s COVID-19 bulletin, the 28,093 deaths represent 1.75 percent of the total confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country, which now stands at 1.605 million.

Earlier, numbers showed that the DOH recorded 8,167 new infections on Monday, making it four consecutive days where the country had new cases of over 8,000.  However, the high case count was offset by a higher recovery tally of 9,095, leading to an active case total of 62,615.

On Sunday, DOH recorded 8,735 new cases; prior to this, new infections were at 8,562 and 8,147 for Friday and Saturday, respectively.

It is not yet clear whether the sudden increase in COVID-19 cases can be attributed to the more transmissible Delta variant, but analytics group OCTA Research believes that the Delta variant is already spreading in Metro Manila.

Metro Manila is set to undergo another round of enhanced community quarantine, the strictest lockdown status, from August 6 to 20 in order to arrest the spread of outbreaks due to Delta variant.

DOH said that one laboratory was not operational last July 31, while three other labs were not able to submit their data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System.

Also, based on the data from the last 14 days, the four laboratories that did not submit data accounted for 1.5 percent of all the samples tested, and 1.0 percent of all the positive cases.

EDV