FOR the first time in nearly one month, the number of active coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases fell below 50,000 as new cases remained below 5,000 for the second straight day.
In its case bulletin Wednesday, June 23, 2021, the Department of Health (DOH) reported 4,353 new infections and 7,139 new recoveries.
There were, however, 119 mortalities which raised the Covid-19 death toll in the country closer to 24,000. Of the 119, 74 were previously tagged as recoveries.
As of Wednesday, a total of 23,928 individuals had succumbed to Covid-19. The case fatality rate remained at 1.74 percent.
The new infections brought the total case count to 1,372,232, of which 1,298,442 (94.6 percent) were recoveries.
Fifteen duplicates, including 12 recoveries, were removed from the total count.
With recoveries higher than the new infections, the number of active cases went down to 49,862, the lowest since the 48,109 on May 27, 2021.
The testing output on June 21 remained low at 33,413, of which 11.4 percent yielded positive results for Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.
Six laboratories, which contributed 3.2 percent of the samples tested and 4.5 percent of the positive results in the last 14 days, were unable to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System on June 21. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)