PH logs 156 COVID-19 deaths, death toll now at 49,386 — DOH

(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 — The country reported 156 new COVID-19 deaths on Sunday, bringing the death toll to 49,386, the Department of Health (DOH) said.

The total number of deaths accounts for 1.74 percent of all cases.

“Of the 156 reported deaths, only 12 occurred in December 2021. Thirty-six percent of the reported deaths today occurred in November 2021 due to late encoding of death information to COVIDKaya,” DOH said in a statement.

COVIDKaya is the platform that stores data from all confirmed COVID-19 cases.

The DOH said it is coordinating with the Epidemiology and Surveillance Units to ensure that the case information is updated.

Meanwhile, the total number of infections in the country is now at 2,834,775 after 603 new cases were reported.

Of the total number of cases, 13,853 or 0.5 percent are tagged as “active cases” with 49.1 percent having mild or no symptoms.

The total number of recoveries meanwhile is now at 2,771,536 or 97.8 percent of the cases after 1,047 cases were reported.

The current positivity rate remains at 1.8 percent. The 1.8 positivity rate was maintained for the past three days and is well within the World Health Organization’s ideal positivity rate of 5 percent.

Meanwhile, six duplicates — all recoveries — were removed from the total case tally, according to the DOH. There are also 116 cases that were found to be negative and were removed from the case count.

A total of 115 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation, the DOH said.

Meanwhile, global COVID-19 infection now stands at 265.3 million including 5.2 million deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Case Tracker.

/MUF