THE Department of Health (DOH) on Thursday, September 2, 2021, reported over 16,000 additional cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) as testing output improved.
In its case bulletin, the DOH listed 16,621 new infections, 148 additional deaths and 10,965 new recoveries.
The new cases raised the cumulative Covid-19 tally to 2,020,484.
The testing output improved to 60,973 on August 31, with a higher daily positivity rate of 26.9 percent.
Five laboratories were unable to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System. There were 92 duplicates that were removed from the total case count.
The additional deaths, which included 66 cases that were reclassified from recoveries, raised the death toll from Covid-19 to 33,680. The case fatality rate remained at 1.67 percent.
With the additional recoveries, a total of 1,840,294 have now recovered from infection.
The number of active cases in hospitals and isolation facilities went up to 146,510, comprising 7.3 percent of the total case count.
Of these, 0.6 percent were critical, 1.1 percent were severe, 0.99 percent were moderate, 96.2 percent were mild and 1.1 percent were asymptomatic.
DOH officials have warned that the cases are expected to continue rising, driven by the highly infectious Delta variant of Sars-CoV-2.
In a virtual briefing earlier Thursday, Epidemiology Bureau Director Alethea de Guzman said the daily average went up by around 77 percent to 17,442 cases for the recent week from August 26 to September 1 compared to 9,835 cases for the period August 5 to 11.
De Guzman said they have observed a new peak every week. The fastest increase was noted in the National Capital Region (NCR) Plus and the rest of Luzon.
Twelve of the 17 regions are still considered high risk due to an increasing two-week growth rate and high average daily attack rate.
These are the NCR, Calabarzon, Cagayan Valley, Cordillera, Central Luzon, Northern Mindanao, Ilocos, Davao, Western Visayas, Soccsksargen and Caraga.
Five regions - Calabarzon, Cagayan Valley, Cordillera, Central Luzon and Northern Mindanao - have high risk Covid-19 bed and intensive care unit (ICU) utilization while seven other regions have either high risk bed or high risk ICU utilization.
Central Visayas, which used to have one of the highest two-week growth rates, was observed to be experiencing a slowdown in cases as its two-week growth rate declined to -2.0 percent in the recent two weeks from 45 percent in the previous two weeks.
The average daily attack rate in Central Visayas, however, remained high at 12.08 per 100,000 population for the period August 19 to September 1, 2021. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)