FOR the second consecutive day, over 100 cases tagged as recoveries were validated as mortalities, sending the daily death toll closer to 200.
In its case bulletin Thursday, July 8, 2021, the Department of Health (DOH) reported 191 additional deaths, 5,484 new cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) and 3,925 new recoveries.
The additional deaths, which were the highest since the 196 reported on June 11, included 152 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries, higher than the 123 cases reclassified as deaths a day earlier.
These raised the Covid-19 death toll in the country to 25,650. The case fatality rate remained at 1.76 percent.
The new infections brought the total case count in the country to 1,455,585. Nine duplicates, including six recoveries, were removed from the tally.
Testing output improved on July 6 to 49,926 as all laboratories were able to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System. The daily positivity rate remained high at 11.3 percent, although it has stayed below 12 percent for the 10 day in a row.
Of the total cases, 3.4 percent or 49,036 were active cases in hospitals and isolation facilities.
Meanwhile, a total of 1,380,899, or 94.9 percent of the cumulative cases, have now recovered from infection.
Globally, deaths from Covid-19 has crossed 4.0 million, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a media briefing on July 7. More than 185 million have been infected.
WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said "the world is at a perilous point in the pandemic."
"We have just passed the tragic milestone of four million recorded Covid-19 deaths, which likely underestimates the overall toll," he said during the media briefing.
He said the fast moving variants and "shocking inequity" in vaccination are compounding sharp increases in cases and hospital admissions.
"This is leading to an acute shortage of oxygen, treatments and driving a wave of death in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America," he said. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)