NEW coronavirus infections in the Philippines soared past the April 2021 peak to hit more than 17,000 in a single day on Friday, August 20, 2021, and the Department of Health (DOH) warned that the daily tally could increase further due to the presence of highly transmissible variants.
The new cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) raised the cumulative case count nationwide to 1.8 million, with over 31,000 deaths.
"The increase in cases that we see is caused by a combination of factors - breaches in the minimum public health standards and in the prevent-detect-isolate-treat-reintegrate strategies, and may have also been aggravated by the presence of variants," DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said Friday.
She also cited the intensive contact tracing and active case finding activities of the local government units in high-risk areas, which "may have also contributed to the increasing numbers as we actively find more cases."
In its case bulletin, the Department of Health (DOH) reported 17,231 new cases, 317 additional deaths and 5,595 new recoveries.
The daily positivity rate also increased to a new high of 26.1 percent, which means that roughly four out of 15 persons tested for Sars-CoV-2 yielded a positive result.
The testing output jumped to 64,934 on August 18 as only two laboratories failed to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System.
The new cases brought the cumulative count to 1,807,800 since the pandemic started. There were 434 duplicates, which included 424 recoveries, that were removed from the tally.
New records
These brought the seven-day moving average for the recent week to 13,836, nearly 30 percent higher than the previous highest seven-day moving average of 10,868 on April 9 to 15.
The new cases surpassed the 15,310 cases recorded on April 2, which had included a backlog of 3,709 cases that should have been counted on March 31 if not for a glitch in the DOH epidemiological surveillance system CovidKaya.
These also topped the 14,895 cases on August 19 and 14,749 on August 15.
Daily Covid-19 cases in the Philippines first reached a peak of 6,958 on August 10, 2020. The second peak was in April 2021. The country is riding its third wave of infections, which are believed to be driven by the highly contagious Delta variant.
For this year, from January 1 to August 20, the DOH reported a total of 1,333,736, around 280 percent higher than the 474,064 recorded for the entire 2020.
Of the total case count as of August 20, 123,251 were active cases, the highest since April 20, 2021. Among these cases, 0.7 percent were critical, 1.2 percent were severe, 0.86 percent were moderate, 94.1 percent were mild and 3.2 percent were asymptomatic.
The additional deaths, which included 221 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries but were validated to have died, were the highest since April 9. These raised the Covid-19 death toll in the country to 31,198 and pushed the case fatality rate higher to 1.73 percent.
The total number of persons who have recovered from infection went up to 1,653,351.
The Philippines has reverted to a high-risk classification for Covid-19 with a positive double-digit two-week growth rate.
The Delta variant (B.1.617.2) has been detected in 14 out of 17 regions, and in all local government units in the densely populated National Capital Region. (Marites Villamor-Ilano with HDT / SunStar Philippines)