AFTER several weeks of reporting a low number of deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), the Department of Health (DOH) confirmed 382 mortalities on Tuesday, April 6, 2021.
In its case bulletin issued at nearly 5 p.m. Tuesday, DOH said the number included 341 deaths that occurred before April 2021 but went unreported due to a technical issue.
“A technical issue with the case collection systems resulted in lower reporting of Covid-19 death counts over the past week. The said issue caused incomplete fatality numbers and data to be encoded and as a result, there were 341 deaths prior to April 2021 that went unreported,” DOH stated.
“The number of deaths reported today (382) already includes the said deaths not reported in previous counts,” it added.
The 382 deaths on Tuesday raised the Covid-19 death toll to 13,817. The case fatality rate went up to 1.7 percent.
The DOH case bulletin also reported 9,373 new infections, bringing the cumulative case count to 812,760.
The number of active cases increased to 152,562, or 18.8 percent of the total caseload. Of these active cases, 97.5 percent had mild symptoms, 1.1 percent had no symptoms, 0.31 percent were moderately ill, 0.5 percent were severely ill and another 0.5 percent were in critical condition.
The positivity rate remained high at 19.9 percent, which means roughly one in five persons tested were positive for Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. Testing was low as only 27,055 samples were processed as of noon of April 5.
Occupancy of intensive care unit (ICU) beds in the National Capital Region (NCR), where more than half of the new infections reported daily originated, has increased to 82 percent.
Isolation beds and ward beds in the NCR were 71 percent and 60 percent, respectively, occupied. Around 63 percent of the ventilators available in the capital region were in use.
In the last 14 days to April 5, confirmed infections in the NCR reached 62,096, the highest among the regions.
NCR was followed by Calabarzon with 19,890 cases for the same period, Central Luzon with 11,197, Cagayan Valley with 4,645 and Central Visayas with 3,510.
Among the cities and provinces, the highest number of cases in the last 14 days to April 5 was 12,870 in Quezon City, which is also the most populous city in the country.
Quezon City was followed by Manila with 9,168 cases, Cavite with 6,952, Bulacan with 6,201 and Rizal with 5,428. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)