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1,923 new COVID-19 cases bring the Philippines total count to more than 365,000
Xave Gregorio (Philstar.com) – October 23, 2020 – 4:00 pm
MANILA, Philippines – The total number of COVID-19 cases in the country is now 365,799 after the Department of Health reported 1,923 new infections on Friday, with 91% of them occurring in the past 14 days.
This is the fourth day in a row that the number of new cases has remained below 2,000.
Davao City led with the most new cases, with 99 new infections, followed by Cavite (94), Manila (94), Quezon City (92) and Negors Occidental (89).
The health department also reported 132 new deaths, bringing the death toll from the new coronavirus to 6,915.
Most of the new deaths, 36% of them, were recorded in Metro Manila, followed by Central Luzon (25%), Calabarzon (17%) and Western Visayas (8%).
The department also recorded 424 new recoveries, bringing the total number of people who have survived COVID-19 to 312,691.
With new cases, deaths, and recoveries, the total number of active cases is now 46,193.
The agency also said it removed 12 of the total case count, and eight of them were recovered patients.
He added that 58 cases previously labeled as recovered were actually deaths.
He also said that 13 labs were unable to send data to the department.
While the cases have recently declined, the country’s testing capacity has also dropped, with the total number of tests conducted in recent days below the 30,000 mark that the government has set out to do every day.
Coronavirus tests fell to their lowest level in more than three months after the Philippine Red Cross stopped accepting tests uploaded to Philippine Health Insurance Corp., which owes the humanitarian organization more than P930 million in testing fees. .
On October 18 alone, four days since the Red Cross stopped testing, the processed samples dropped to just 18,810, the lowest level since July 12. By number of people, 17,177 people were tested that day, the lowest since July 12.
As of October 20, testing has recovered slightly, though still below government targets, at 24,123 people tested.
Before it decided to stop testing uploaded to PhilHealth, the 10 labs in the People’s Republic of China were testing 8,000 to 12,000 samples per day, representing 26% to 40% of daily testing capacity.
In February, before the deadly virus turned into a pandemic, the government flaunted the Philippines’ low case count as a success, but was later proven wrong as more testing centers were established and monitoring improved. .
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