MANILA – The Department of Health (DOH) on Wednesday reported 1,392 new coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) infections, raising the overall tally to 58,850.
The DOH said the additional cases reported were based on the total tests done by 73 out of 82 operational laboratories.
The newly announced cases included 708 from the National Capital Region (NCR), 198 from Cebu, 86 from Iloilo, 64 from Laguna, and 46 from Cavite.
It also reported 517 new recoveries and 11 new deaths.
These figures bring the total number of recoveries to 20,976 and the total number of deaths to 1,614.
It said the total cases reported are subject to change as the numbers undergo constant cleaning and validation.
When asked why the case doubling time became longer despite the increase in the reported number of positive cases daily, DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said case doubling time is based on historical data and not on daily data.
"The increase in (the) number of cases in a day may not be affected if the number of cases in the past days is not as much as the number of cases reported for today. It could be that the case doubling time might change in the next few days," Vergeire said.
The value of case doubling time is not used to predict or estimate the future number of cases and other methodologies such as disease modeling and projections are done to predict future case numbers, she added.
The DOH also noted that there are 36,260 active cases and about 90.6 percent of them are mild, 8.6 percent are asymptomatic, 0.4 percent are severe, and 0.5 percent are critical.
As of Tuesday, a total of 964,850 individual tests were performed by the 63 licensed RT-PCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) laboratories and 22 licensed GeneXpert laboratories nationwide.
As of Wednesday, the DOH has 15,319 total bed capacity dedicated to patients with Covid-19.
Occupied are about 48.5 percent of 1,323 intensive care unit beds; 47.1 percent of 10,555 isolation beds; and 54.3 percent of 3,441 ward beds.
There are 1,928 total ventilators for Covid-19 patients with about 27.1 percent in use. (PNA)
