FOR the fourth consecutive day, the Department of Health (DOH) reported at least 150 coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) deaths in a day as more cases previously tagged as recovered were reclassified as mortalities.

In its case bulletin Saturday, May 29, 2021, DOH reported 156 additional mortalities, raising the death toll from Covid-19 to 20,722. The case fatality remained at 1.7 percent.

Of the 156 mortalities, 91 were previously tagged as recoveries and reclassified as deaths after final validation.

DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire earlier said validation of some cases from the regions takes time, which explains the delayed reporting of deaths that occurred in the previous months.

The DOH case bulletin also confirmed 7,443 new cases on Saturday, bringing the total case count to 1,216,582. Fifteen duplicates, including 14 recoveries, were removed from the total.

Of the total, 53,614 or 4.4 percent of the total were active cases.

There were 7,533 recoveries, pushing the total to 1,142,246, or 93.9 percent of the total caseload.

A total of 46,442 samples were tested for Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, on May 27, of which 12.5 percent yielded positive results.

Only two laboratories were unable to submit their data to Covid-19 Document Repository System. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)