PH tally of COVID-19 cases nears 190,000 with almost 3,000 deaths

MANILA - The Philippines confirmed 2,378 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday bringing the country’s total to 189,601.

The Department of Health also reported 16,459 new recoveries, as the DOH implemented “time-based mass recoveries” pushing the total number of Filipinos who recovered from the disease to 131,367. This meant that the total number of active cases is 55,236.

Thirty-two more deaths were reported from the illness, bringing COVID-19’s death toll in the Philippines to 2,998.

The National Capital Region had the most number of new cases at 1,022. It was followed by Cavite with 132 cases, Laguna with 128, Rizal with 115 and Cebu with 96.

Sunday’s results were based on the total tests done by 99 out of 109 current operational labs. The number of cases confirmed today is the lowest so far this August.

The DOH also reported that 4 cases that were previously reported to have recovered have been validated to have died and already included in the count of new deaths.

“These numbers undergo constant cleaning and validation,” the DOH said.

• DOH removes over 4,000 ‘duplicate cases’ from COVID-19 tally; 309 ‘recoveries’ turned out to be deaths

The Philippines has the highest number of total cases in Southeast Asia.

Worldwide, the novel coronavirus has infected over 23.2 million since the outbreak was first reported in China in late 2019. It has also killed more than 804,000 people, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

The United States has reported the most number of infections at over 5.6 million, with over 176,000 deaths.