FOR the third straight day, over 300 cases tagged as recoveries were validated to be either active cases or deaths.
In its case bulletin Thursday, June 17, 2021, the Department of Health (DOH) reported 6,637 new cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), 155 additional mortalities and 4,585 new recoveries.
The new infections brought the total Covid-19 case count in the Philippines to 1,339,457, after the removal of 10 recoveries and two other duplicates.
The additional mortalities included 107 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries but were validated to be deaths. Mortalities have exceeded 100 for three consecutive days now.
The additional deaths reported on Thursday raised the Covid-19 death toll in the Philippines to 23,276. The case fatality rate increased to 1.74 percent, the highest in 11 weeks.
The new recoveries brought the total to 1,257,774, or around 93.9 percent of the total case count.
DOH removed 235 cases that were reclassified as active cases and 10 recoveries that were found to be duplicates.
On June 15 and 16, DOH also reclassified 304 and 375 reported recoveries, respectively, as active cases. On June 11, 1,000 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as active cases.
With the reclassification of the 235 recoveries to active cases as well as the new infections, the number of active cases in the country went up to 58,407 on Thursday. These constitute 4.4 percent of the Covid-19 case count.
The daily positivity rate on June 15 declined to 11.9 percent as testing output improved to 44,435. Five laboratories failed to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System on June 15, DOH said. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)