DOH reports ‘low’ 6,879 new COVID-19 cases due to fewer tested samples

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) reported a “relatively low” 6,879 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, citing fewer samples tested in laboratories over the weekend.

This brought the active cases in the country to 63,137, out of the 1,612,541 confirmed COVID-19 cases.

The DOH has been recording new COVID-19 cases that are over 8,000 for the past four days since Friday. However, the agency said, “the relatively low cases today is due to fewer samples received last Sunday.”

Meanwhile, the health department added 6,337 recoveries to the list, raising the number of patients who recovered from the disease to 1,521,263.

Another 48 patients have died, raising the death count to 28,141.

According to the DOH, 17.5 percent of 37,302 people who were tested were found positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 last Sunday.

The DOH said one laboratory was not operational on Sunday while nine labs were not able to submit their data on time. These 10 labs contribute 3.7 percent of samples tested and 3.6 percent of positive individuals on average based on data in the last 14 days.

Some 100 duplicates, including 98 recoveries, were removed from the total case count. Twelve cases initially tagged as recoveries were validated as active cases, while 18 cases that were tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after validation.

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