DESPITE low testing output, new coronavirus infections exceeded 7,000 on Wednesday, August 4, 2021, the Department of Health (DOH) case bulletin showed.
The DOH listed 7,342 new cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), 90 additional deaths and 7,285 new recoveries.
The new infections brought the seven-day moving average to 7,652, highest in three months.
The cumulative Covid-19 case count nationwide increased to 1,619,824, less the 59 duplicates that were removed.
The daily positivity rate remained high at 16.4 percent out of the 41,257 samples tested on August 2. The testing output was relatively low because one laboratory was non-operational while six failed to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System.
The additional deaths, which included 51 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries, raised the death toll to 28,231. The case fatality rate declined by one percentage point to 1.74 percent.
Total recoveries went up to 1,528,422, although 23 cases tagged as recoveries were found to be active cases.
There remained 63,171 active cases as of August 2, of which 1.2 percent were critical, 2.0 percent were severe, 1.42 percent were moderate, 94.1 percent were mild and 1.3 percent were asymptomatic.
DOH officials earlier said the impact of the highly contagious Delta variant is already observed nationally, with several provinces, highly urbanized cities and independent component cities showing an uptick in new infections.
The University of the Philippines Philippine Genome Center has detected 216 cases with the Delta variant (B.1.617.2) of Sars-CoV-2 nationwide.
Of these, the DOH Epidemiology Bureau said 47 were in the National Capital Region, specifically in Las Piñas (14), Manila (11), Pasig (6), Caloocan (4), Malabon (4), Makati (3), San Juan (2), Mandaluyong (2) and Valenzuela (1).
The UP-PGC has also detected 1,858 Alpha (B.1.1.7) cases and 2,146 Beta (B.1.351) cases.
Alpha, Beta and Delta are among the four variants of concern of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. The fourth variant of concern is Gamma (P.1). There have been only two Gamma cases in the country. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)