THE Philippines logged on Monday, December 6, 543 new coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases, 830 additional recoveries and 113 more deaths.
The Department of Health (DOH) said the fresh infections brought the country’s total caseload to 2,835,154 as of 4 p.m. Monday, while the 830 new recoveries pushed the active cases down to 13,548 (0.5 percent).
This is the lowest number of active cases since May 31, 2020, when 13,085 were reported.
Of these active cases, 1,063 were asymptomatic, 5,545 were considered mild cases, 3,898 were moderate, 2,366 were severe, and 676 were critical.
The DOH said the total number of people who have recovered from Covid-19 was already at 2,772,107 or 97.8 percent of all confirmed infections.
The death toll rose to 49,499 (1.75 percent) with the new mortalities reported Monday.
The DOH clarified though that of the 113 reported deaths, only 14 occurred in December 2021 and 21 percent occurred in November 2021 due to late encoding of death information to CovidKaya, the agency’s epidemiology surveillance system.
“This issue is currently being coordinated with the Epidemiology and Surveillance Units to ensure information is up to date,” said the health department in its Monday bulletin.
It also reported that the positivity rate in the country remained low at 1.7 percent, based on the 32,634 samples tested last December 4.
It added that based on latest data, two laboratories were not operational, while five were not able to submit output to the Covid-19 Document Repository System last December 4.
These seven laboratories contributed an average of 0.1 percent of all samples tested ad 0.4 percent of all positive cases in the past 14 days.
The DOH continued to advise the public to follow the minimum public health standards and have themselves vaccinated, saying Covid-19 is not over yet.
“Ang banta ng Covid-19 ay hindi natatapos, kaya naman marapat lang na ipagpatuloy natin ang pagsunod sa minimum public health standards at makiisa sa pambansang pagbabakuna,” it said. (LMY)