DESPITE a 34 percent drop in diagnostic tests, the Department of Health (DOH) reported over 8,000 new cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) for the sixth straight day on Tuesday, August 10, 2021.
In its case bulletin, the DOH listed 8,560 new infections, 92 additional deaths and 7,964 recoveries.
Only 33,070 tests to detect Sars-CoV-2 were reported on Sunday, August 8, about 34 percent lower than the 50,096 conducted the previous day.
Thirteen laboratories were unable to submit their testing data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System.
“Daily case counts are affected by the output from the laboratories nationwide. The relatively low case counts today is due to lower laboratory output last Sunday,” the DOH said.
The daily positivity rate increased further to 21.9 percent, highest since April 3, 2021.
The new cases brought the cumulative case count to 1,676,156, after the removal of 118 duplicates.
Of the total, 79,016 were still active cases, including seven cases reclassified from recoveries. Of these active cases, 1.0 percent were critical, 1.7 percent were severe, 1.18 percent were moderate, 94.4 percent were mild and 1.7 percent were asymptomatic.
The additional deaths, which included 29 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries, raised the Covid-19 death toll in the country to 29,220. The case fatality rate declined further to 1.74 percent.
With the new recoveries, a total of 1,567,920 individuals have now recovered from Covid-19 in the Philippines.
DOH Secretary Francisco Duque III, in his report to President Rodrigo Duterte Monday evening, August 9, said epidemic curves across the country were going up.
The seven-day average of new cases increased by 23 percent to 8,934 on August 3 to 9 compared to July 27 to August 2.
On August 9, the highest number of new cases in the provinces and cities was recorded at 909 in Cavite, followed by 603 in Laguna, 473 in Bulacan, 419 in Quezon City and 287 in Makati City.
Cebu Province, which recorded the highest number of new cases on August 8, was not in the top five on Monday. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)