THE Philippines’ coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases continued to decline with the Department of Health (DOH) recording 356 additional infections on Tuesday, December 7, the lowest since July 2020.

This brought the country’s total case count to 2,835,345 with 13,026 active infections (0.5 percent).

The DOH said the new cases account for 1.4 percent of the 24,360 samples tested on December 5.

Of the active cases in the country, 899 were asymptomatic, 5,314 were considered mild, 3,900 were moderate, 2,326 severe and 587 critical.

The health department also recorded 871 new recoveries that pushed the total number of patients who have recovered from Covid-19 to 2,772,728 or 97.8 percent of all confirmed infections.

Ninety-two new mortalities were added to the tally, raising the death toll to 49,591 (1.75 percent).

The DOH clarified, however, that of the 92 reported deaths, only three occurred in December 2021, while 18 percent occurred in November 2021 due to late encoding of death information to its surveillance system CovidKaya.

“This issue is currently being coordinated with the Epidemiology and Surveillance Units to ensure information is up to date,” it said.

It added that two laboratories were not operational while six others were not able to submit data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System last December 5.

Based on the data gathered in the last 14 days, these eight laboratories contributed an average of 0.4 percent of all samples tested and 3.6 percent of all individuals who tested positive for coronavirus.

The DOH continued to call on the public to follow the minimum public health standards and submit themselves for vaccination as added protection against the coronavirus. (LMY)