NEW coronavirus infections stayed below 6,000 on Wednesday, May 5, 2021, but deaths reached 178, the highest in three weeks.

In its case bulletin, the Department of Health (DOH) listed 5,685 new cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), which brought the cumulative case count to 1,073,555.

There were 178 additional deaths that raised the death toll from Covid-19 to 17,800. The case fatality rate increased to 1.66 percent.

The DOH also reported 8,961 new recoveries based on time-based tagging methodology, which declares mild and asymptomatic Covid-19 cases without symptoms for at least 10 consecutive days as recoveries.

These increased the total recoveries to 993,042, or 92.5 percent of the cumulative case count.

Given the higher recoveries compared to new cases, the number of active cases went down to 62,713, the lowest since the 66,567 on March 18, 2021.

Meanwhile, the positivity rate remained below 15 percent, but testing output was low. The DOH bulletin showed that 33,449 samples were tested on May 3 and 14.9 percent came back positive for Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)