DESPITE the lower testing output, the Department of Health (DOH) on Wednesday, July 21, 2021, reported over 6,000 new cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), the highest in nearly a month.

The DOH cautioned, however, that details of some cases, such as health status, residence and quarantine status, may not be updated due to technical issues in the CovidKaya epidemiological surveillance system.

These technical issues have caused a delay in the release of case bulletins, which are scheduled to be issued at 4 p.m. daily.

The DOH said the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) expected to resolve the technical issues in a few days.

In its case bulletin, the DOH listed 6,560 new cases, 5,364 recoveries and 32 additional mortalities.

The new infections brought the cumulative case count to 1,524,449. Fourteen duplicates, including eight recoveries and two deaths, were removed from the tally.

Testing output was low at 36,168, with a 12.1 percent positivity rate, the highest in about a month. Four laboratories failed to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System on July 19.

Of the 32 additional deaths, 30 were cases that were previously tagged as recoveries. These raised the Covid-19 death toll to 26,874. The case fatality rate declined to 1.76 percent.

The new recoveries brought the total recoveries to 1,449,579, which constitute 95.1 percent of the total case count.

There remained 47,996 active cases, of which 92.1 percent were mild, 1.6 percent were critical, 2.6 percent were severe, 1.84 percent were moderate and 1.8 percent were asymptomatic. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)