18,638 new COVID-19 cases bring active tally to 231K

The Philippines on Friday logged 18,638 new COVID-19 cases increasing the nationwide caseload to 3,511,491.

Based on the Department of Health (DOH)’s latest bulletin, 231,658 active infections logged, of which 7,055 are asymptomatic, 219,811 are mild, 2,971 are moderate, 1,509 are severe, and 312 are in critical condition.

The DOH said of the 18,638 reported cases on Friday, 18,281 or 98% occurred within the recent 14 days from January 15 to January 28.

The top regions with cases in the recent two weeks were Region 4-A with 2,379 or 13%, followed by the National Capital Region (NCR) with 2,211 or 12% and Region 6 with 1,969 or 11%.

Total recoveries rose to 3,226,032 with 13,106 new individuals recovered from the viral disease.

The DOH reported 68 new fatalities increasing the death tally to 53,801.

Meanwhile, the country’s COVID-19 positivity rate was at 34.6%, which is higher than the World Health Organization's requirement target of less than 5% positivity rate.

The total conducted COVID-19 tests were at 62,671.

According to the latest data, it showed that 49% of 3,900 intensive care unit (ICU) beds for COVID-19 patients nationwide are in use.

At least 51% of the 15,900 ward beds in the country were utilized, while 45% of the 4,400 ward beds in the National Capital Region (NCR) were in use.

The DOH said all laboratories were operational since January 26, while there were four laboratories that failed to submit data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System.

The health department reported 594 duplicates were removed from the total case count. Of these, 242 are recoveries and 3 are deaths.

In addition, at least 22 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation. —NB, GMA News