THE Department of Health (DOH) on Monday, April 26. 2021, reported nearly 9,000 additional coronavirus infections, pushing the cumulative case count past the one-million mark.
In the DOH case bulletin Monday, the cumulative case count increased to 1,006,428, including 8,929 new cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19.
There were 70 additional mortalities, less than 100 for the first time in six days. These raised the Covid-19 death toll to 16,853. The case fatality rate declined further to 1.67 percent.
Through its time-based recovery scheme, the DOH reported 11,333 new recoveries on Monday, bringing the total to 914,952.
With recoveries exceeding the new infections, the number of active cases further decreased to 74,623 as of Monday. This constituted 7.4 percent of the cumulative case count.
The daily positivity rate stayed below 20 percent. As of April 24, 16.7 percent of 45,863 tests yielded positive results.
Earlier Monday, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque Jr. pointed out that around 90 percent of the cases have recovered.
Based on Monday’s case bulletin, the recovery rate was 90.9 percent.
“Huwag n’yo pong tingnan lamang ang one million cases. Unang-una, halos 900,000 na po ang gumaling d’yan. So (ang) mga aktibong cases natin ay mahigit kumulang ay 100,000 at kung ikukumpara mo ito sa buong daigdig, eh number...26. Bumaba pa po ang ranking natin. Ibig sabihin, mas humusay pa ang ating ranking sa buong mundo,” he said
(Don’t just look at the one million cases. Firstly, around 900,000 have recovered. There are just around 100,000 cases. Compared to the rest of the world, the Philippines has a lower ranking.)
Based on the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center tracker, however, the Philippines is moving up in ranking in terms of cumulative Covid-19 cases.
From 30th on April 4, the Philippines moved up to 27th two weeks later on April 18 and further to 26th on April 25.
Roque also noted that the case fatality rate in the Philippines, which stood at 1.6 percent on April 26, is lower than the global average of 2.1 percent.
“I don’t think it (one million cases) is a negative reflection (of government’s pandemic response). On the other hand, dahil nga po meron tayong world ranking, makikita po natin (because of our world ranking, we can see) that we are managing the new variants rather well),” he added.
The Philippines has detected three variants of concern and a new variant of interest that was first detected locally.
The three variants of concern are B.1.1.7 (first reported in United Kingdom), B.1.351 (first found in South Africa) and P.1 (first detected in Brazil tourists).
The new variant that was first detected in the Philippines is called P.3. It contains mutations found in the three variants of concern mentioned.
As of April 18, the University of the Philippines Philippine Genome Center has found a total of 1,503 variant cases, consisting of 658 for B.1.1.7, 695 for the B.1.351, 2 for P.1 variant, and 148 for the P.3.
Covid-19 cases in the Philippines rapidly increased beginning March, breaching 7,000 and surpassing the 2020 peak of 6,958 on March 19. Cases first hit 10,000 a day on March 29.
The seven-day moving average soared to more than 10,000 by March 31 from about 1,000 at the beginning of the year.
In March alone, new cases reached 171,285, exceeding the sum of cases reported in the months of August and December 2020 at 127,465 and 42,434, respectively.
April is worse, with new cases reaching 259,140 on April 26, more than 50 percent higher than the March 2021 case count.
With the reimposition of stringent quarantine measures in the National Capital Region (NCR), where most of the cases were detected, the daily tally began to decrease to below 10,000 on April 19. The seven-day moving average, however, was still above 8,000 as of April 26. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)