WHILE new cases of infection seemed to have plateaued, deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) increased further to exceed 200 on Sunday, May 9, 2021.
In its case bulletin Sunday, the Department of Health (DOH) reported 7,174 new Covid-19 cases, bringing the cumulative case count to 1,101,990.
The seven-day moving average went down further to 6,735 and the daily positivity rate fell below 14 percent, but DOH officials also noted that testing output has been low.
On May 7, 46,878 samples were tested for Sars-CoV-2 and 13.9 percent yielded positive results.
The DOH also confirmed 204 mortalities, surpassing 200 for the first time in nearly a month. Mortalities have exceeded 100 in the last four days from May 5 to 8.
These additional mortalities raised the Covid-19 death toll in the Philippines to 18,472 and the case fatality rate to 1.68 percent.
There were 9,197 new recoveries on Sunday, bringing the total to 1,022,224.
With more recoveries than new cases, the number of active cases decreased further to 61,294 or 5.6 percent of the cumulative cases.
Globally, the Philippines climbed one spot higher to 25th among countries with the highest number of Covid-19 cases, based on the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center tracker.
As of Sunday, more than 157 million people have contracted the virus globally and nearly 3.3 million had died. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)