(UPDATED) New infections were the lowest in three weeks at 6,895 on Wednesday, April 28, 2021, but there were 115 additional mortalities from coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), which pushed the death toll past 17,000.
In its case bulletin issued at around 5 p.m. Wednesday, the Department of Health (DOH) listed 17,031 deaths from Covid-19, or 1.67 percent of the cumulative case count of 1.02 million.
The 6,895 new cases were the lowest since the 6,414 on April 7, but DOH said the low number is due to the low testing output on April 26.
“The low number of new cases today is due to the low testing output of laboratories on April 26 and does not mean that we can be complacent. DOH reminds the public that we must abide by health protocols to avoid transmission,” the case bulletin stated.
Tests conducted on April 26 reached only 37,428, of which 18.1 percent yielded positive results.
There were 10,739 additional recoveries based on DOH’s time-based recovery scheme, which declares as recoveries the mild and asymptomatic Covid-19 patients without symptoms for at least 10 consecutive days from the date of onset of illness for mild cases and the date of specimen collection for asymptomatic cases.
In a statement, the DOH addressed concerns on the integrity of their data on recoveries, saying the cases tagged as recoveries are endorsed to the concerned Epidemiology and Surveillance Units (ESUs) for validation before these are listed among the recoveries.
The DOH also noted that in many of the cases reported, most have a lead time of seven days or less from the onset of symptoms to the date when the cases are reported.
“This means that there is a delay from when the case got infected, showed symptoms, got tested, and turned out positive to the date the case was reported,” DOH added.
The new recoveries brought the total to 935,695, or 91.7 percent of the cumulative case count.
With recoveries exceeding new infections, the number of active cases fell further to 67,769, or 6.6 percent of the cumulative case count.
Meanwhile, vaccinations against Covid-19 decelerated although the number of vaccine recipients increased.
The seven-day average of vaccinated individuals slowed to 35,320 on April 27 from 43,835 on April 20 and 47,545 on April 13, according to the latest report from the National Task Force (NTF) Against Covid-19 and DOH.
As of April 27, the number of individuals who have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine has gone up to 1,562,815, around 1.45 percent of the total Philippine population and 2.23 percent of the government’s 70-million target for this year.
Of these, 246,986 have also received their second dose.
The total number of Covid-19 vaccine doses administered in the country was 1,809,801, or around 60 percent of the 3,025,600 doses distributed to 3,415 vaccination sites.
Government has yet to distribute the 500,000 additional Sinovac doses that arrived on April 22. It was the third batch of government-procured vaccines from Sinovac Biotech of China.
The government has taken delivery of a total of 3,525,600 vaccine doses as of April 22, including 525,600 doses of AstraZeneca that were donated through the Covax facility.
The rest were from Sinovac, including one million doses donated by China. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)