THE number of people in the Philippines who are currently sick due to coronavirus disease (Covid-19) has breached the 200,000 mark, as 32,246 more cases were recorded Wednesday, January 12, 2022.
The Department of Health (DOH), in its 4 p.m. Wednesday bulletin, said the country now has a total of 208,164 (6.8 percent) active Covid-19 cases, of which 197,091 have mild symptoms of the disease, 6,435 are asymptomatic, 2,872 moderate, 1,468 severe and 298 critical.
The new cases reported Wednesday also brought the country’s total caseload to 3,058,634.
The positivity rate remained high at 45.7 percent, based on the 63,903 samples tested last January 10.
The DOH also recorded 5,063 new recoveries that raised the total to 2,797,816 or 91.5 percent of all confirmed infections.
The death toll also rose to 52,654 with 144 new mortalities logged. This accounts for 1.72 percent of the country’s Covid-19 cases.
The DOH said 11 laboratories failed to submit their output last January 10, contributing on average 3.3 percent of all samples tested and 4.5 percent of positive results.
The health department appealed to the public anew to be vigilant especially that the highly transmissible Omicron variant of Sars-CoV-2, which causes the Covid-19, has already been circulating in communities.
It said minimum public health standards should be observed, while it encouraged those who remained unvaccinated to get their shots as added protection against Covid-19.
It said the country’s hospitalization rate, particularly the intensive care unit (ICU) bed utilization, remained at 43 percent nationwide and 56 percent in the National Capital Region (NCR).
The isolation beds are also 45 percent utilized nationwide and 55 percent for NCR. Ward beds, meanwhile, are 43 percent and 67 percent utilized for nationwide and in NCR, respectively.