MANILA, March 7 (Philippines Daily Inquirer/ANN): The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported on Sunday 3,276 new Covid-19 infections, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the South-East Asian country to 594,412.
It is the third day in a row that the Philippines has been reporting over 3,000 daily confirmed cases.
Meanwhile, the health department also recorded 10,516 recoveries, bringing the number of patients who have recuperated from the disease to 545,853.
There were also 51 new deaths, which brings the death toll now to 12,516.
As of Sunday (March 7) night, the active coronavirus cases in the Philippines is now 36,043.
The Philippines, which has about 110 million population, has tested over 8 million people since the disease emerged in January last year.
According to DOH, active cases compose 6.1 per cent of the total caseload, while recoveries and deaths make up 91.8 and 2.11 per cent of the count, respectively.
Of the active cases, 90.6 percent are mild, 4.2 per cent are asymptomatic, 2.2 percent are critical, 2.1 per cent are severe, and 0.91 per cent are moderate cases.
Two duplicate entries were removed from the case count, while 13 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were also reclassified as deaths after final validation.
Seven laboratories were not able to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System on Saturday (March 6).
The DOH has observed an increase in the number of additional coronavirus cases as the country recorded a total of 118 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2 from the United Kingdom and 58 cases of the B.1.135 variant from South Africa.
The DOH earlier said that both variants have demonstrated increased transmissibility of the virus, with the South African variant also having a potential impact on vaccine efficacy.
With the presence of the said variants of concern, the OCTA Research, which monitors the trends of Covid-19 in the Philippines, projected that the country may have 5,000 to 6,000 new Covid-19 cases per day by the end of March. - Philippines Daily Inquirer/ANN
