1,097 more COVID-19 infections push Philippines’ total cases to 476,916
MANILA, Philippines (Updated 4:15 p.m.) — The Department of Health recorded Saturday 1,097 new coronavirus infections, bringing the country’s total number of cases to 476,916.
Most of the new infections were reported in Davao del Norte where 65 of the new cases were tallied. Davao City followed with 60 new infections, then by Laguna (53), Batangas (48) and Cavite (43).
The DOH also reported that five more people died due to the highly-contagious respiratory disease, pushing the death toll to 9,253.
Meanwhile, 47 more people recovered from COVID-19, bringing the total number of survivors to 439,942.
With these new cases, deaths and recoveries, the number of active cases is now at 27,721, representing 5.8% of all recorded cases.
Health experts have been warning that a surge in COVID-19 cases may happen after the holidays, which can be further complicated if the new variant of the virus feared to be more infectious enters the country.
Cases of COVID-19 have been steadily increasing in the past four days, following the shutdown of several labs over the holidays which caused the number of cases to artificially deflate.
The DOH said 15 laboratories were unable to submit their results for January 1 as the COVID-19 Document Repository System was temporarily unavailable, but added that the impact of this was "minimal."
The Philippines has the second worst outbreak in Southeast Asia, next to Indonesia’s over 743,000 cases.
The country reported its first COVID-19 case on Jan. 30, 2020: a 38-year-old woman from Wuhan in China, where the virus first appeared in late 2019. Her companion, a 44-year-old man, was the first confirmed fatality outside China.
The government is aiming to inoculate 24.7 million Filipinos in the first part of the vaccination program against COVID-19 this year, however, it has only managed to strike one supply deal for only 2.6 million doses of the shots, which would be split in half with the private sector that purchased the jabs from British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca.
Globally, the new coronavirus has infected nearly 84 million individuals and has killed over 1.8 million people.
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