THE Philippines’ death toll from coronavirus disease (Covid-19) was already close to reaching 50,000 as of Thursday, December 9, while 562 more infections were added to the tally, said the Department of Health (DOH).
In its 4 p.m. Thursday bulletin, the DOH said the country’s total case count has reached 2,835,996 with the 562 new infections reported.
Of the total, 12,169 or 0.4 percent were active cases, of which 851 were asymptomatic, 4,838 were mild, 3,857 moderate, 2,177 severe and 446 in critical condition.
The total number of patients who succumbed to the disease has reached 49,936 with 176 new mortalities reported Thursday. This accounts for 1.76 percent of the country’s confirmed cases.
The DOH clarified, however, that of the 176 reported deaths, only eight occurred in December 2021 while seven percent of the mortalities occurred in November 2021 due to late encoding of death information to CovidKaya.
“This issue is currently being coordinated with the Epidemiology and Surveillance Units to ensure information is up to date,” it said.
The number of people who have recovered from the disease continued to increase, with 882 new recoveries that brought the total to 2,773,891 (97.8 percent).
The DOH said the Philippines now has a positivity rate of 1.6 percent, based on the 33,295 samples tested last December 7.
All laboratories, except two that were not operational, were able to submit data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System last December 7, added the health agency. (LMY)