DOH confirms 379 new COVID-19 cases, 3rd lowest in 2021

FILE PHOTO: Colorized scanning electron micrograph of an apoptotic cell (red) infected with SARS-COV-2 virus particles (yellow), also known as novel coronavirus, isolated from a patient sample. Image captured at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH/Handout via REUTERS.

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) reported 379 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, the third lowest number of additional coronavirus cases for the year.

The lowest daily tally for 2021 was recorded last December 7 with only 356 new cases. It is also the lowest since July 2, 2020.

With additional 631 recoveries reflected in the Friday bulletin, the country’s active cases went down to 11,905, or just 0.4 percent of all the 2,836,200 confirmed infections. A total of 2,774,334 patients have already recovered.

Meanwhile, the DOH also reported 25 more deaths, but said only five of these occurred in December. This brought the total fatalities caused by COVID-19 complications to 49,961.

Of the over 11,000 active cases, 47.2 percent are mild and asymptomatic. A total of 757 of them are asymptomatic, 4,860 are mild, 3,797 are moderate, 2,060 are severe, and 431 are critical cases.

The DOH reported a positivity rate of 1.3 percent out of 35,903 individuals who got tested last Wednesday.

Four testing laboratories were not operational on Wednesday and five were not able to submit data.

Six duplicates and 169 cases were found to have tested negative have been removed from the total case count, while 19 recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.

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DOH logs 356 new COVID-19 cases, lowest since July 2

JPV