Virus cases hit new high in nearly 3 months

JAPAN. In this photo taken on New Year's Eve, people wearing face masks to protect against the spread of the coronavirus walk though a shopping street in Tokyo. (File)
JAPAN. In this photo taken on New Year's Eve, people wearing face masks to protect against the spread of the coronavirus walk though a shopping street in Tokyo. (File)

THE Department of Health (DOH) on Wednesday, January 27, 2021, reported 2,245 new cases of coronavirus infection, a new high in nearly three months.

Cebu City, which marked a grim milestone on January 26 by posting the highest number of new cases among cities and provinces for the first time since October 2020, remained at the top of the list together with Baguio City.

Both Cebu City and Baguio City had 121 confirmed infections, the DOH case bulletin issued at 4 p.m. Wednesday showed.

Other cities with a high number of cases were Davao City with 102 and Quezon City with 87. Pangasinan posted the fifth highest infections with 81.

The 2,245 new infections were the highest in the recent 80 days from November 9, 2020 to January 27, 2021. These were about 8.0 percent lower than the 2,442 cases reported on November 8, 2020.

These brought the total case count in the country to 518,407, of which 32,384 were active cases.

The case fatality rate further increased to 2.02 percent, with the listing of 97 additional mortalities.

As of January 27, the death toll from coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) in the Philippines stood at 10,481.

DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire traced the increasing death toll to their efforts to harmonize DOH data with those of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

“We have been recording a high number of deaths recently, but only a certain percentage of these numbers occurred recently,” Vergeire said in an online forum earlier Wednesday.

She also reiterated that the rise in infections may be attributed to increased mobility and gatherings during the holidays.

The January 27 case bulletin also showed 140 recoveries, bringing the total number of individuals who have recovered from infection to 475,542.

Testing improved with the conduct of 25,778 tests, but the positivity rate worsened to 5.5 percent as 1,428 individuals were found positive for Sars-CoV-2. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)

Trending

No stories found.

Just in

No stories found.

Branded Content

No stories found.
SunStar Publishing Inc.
www.sunstar.com.ph