WITH 13 laboratories unable to report their testing output two days ago, new coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases declined to 18,012 on Tuesday, September 7, 2021, snapping four consecutive days of over 20,000 infections a day.
Daily Covid-19 cases are usually lower on Tuesdays and Wednesdays because these are based on testing output reported on Sundays and Mondays.
In its case bulletin Tuesday, the Department of Health (DOH) reported that testing output went down to 57,180 from an average of 73,590 in the last three days from September 4 to 6.
The positivity rate remained elevated at 28.1 percent.
The new infections brought the cumulative Covid-19 case count to 2,121,308, less 35 duplicates that were removed from the tally.
The DOH case bulletin also showed 161 additional deaths and 18,945 new recoveries.
With recoveries exceeding new cases, the number of active cases declined to 158,637, of which 0.7 percent were critical, 1.4 percent were severe, 2.49 percent were moderate, 92 percent were mild and 3.4 percent were asymptomatic.
The 161 additional deaths, which included 105 cases reclassified from recoveries, raised the country's Covid-19 death toll to 34,498. The case fatality rate remained at 1.63 percent.
A total of 1,928,173 have now recovered from infection. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)