145 new COVID-related deaths bring tally to 52,293

FILE PHOTO A man wearing personal protective equipment walking into a makeshift ward built for COVID-19 patients at a hospital in Manila. The Omicron variant has been blamed for a record surge in infections in Metro Manila. (Photo by JAM STA ROSA / AFP)

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) added 145 more deaths to the country’s cumulative COVID-19 death tally on Monday, bringing the total to 52,293.

None of these deaths, however, occurred in January or even December.

All were backlogs from the previous months as early as January 2021. Three deaths were confirmed in November; 18 in October; 52 in September; 22 in August; 24 in July; 13 in June; 5 in May; 1 in March; 1 in February; and, 6 in January of last year.

These delays in reported deaths were still due to the late encoding of death information to DOH’s COVIDKaya, which the DOH says is “currently being coordinated with its Epidemiology and Surveillance Units to ensure information is up to date.”

The death toll currently accounts for 1.74 percent of the total 2,998,530 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country.

Active infections, on the other hand, now sits at 157,526 after the DOH reported its highest registered number of daily cases since the pandemic in the country began.

The positivity rate also jumped to 46 percent.

Health care utilization rate nationwide, meanwhile, continued to increase based on DOH’s data, as 38 percent of ICU beds, 41 percent of isolation beds, 41 percent of ward beds, and 17 percent of ventilators are currently in use nationwide.

The increase is more notable in Metro Manila where occupied ICU beds are now currently at 52 percent, isolation beds at 54 percent, ward beds at 67 percent, and 25 percent for ventilators.

As of writing, worldwide deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 tracker, have reached 5,488,794, while infections are at 307,189,908.

EDV