Philippines confirms 8,361 new COVID cases, 9th straight day of decline

MANILA, February 7 ------ The Philippines confirmed 8,361 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, bringing the country’s total to 3,609,568. This was the 9th straight day that new confirmed infections declined. The positivity rate was also at 21.5 percent, which is the lowest so far this year. The Department of Health meanwhile also reported 18,431 new recoveries, pushing the total number of Filipinos who recovered from the disease to 3,428,815. This means that the country has a total of 126,227 active cases as of 4 p.m. Sunday.

Three hundred twelve new deaths from COVID-19 were also reported, bringing the country’s death toll from the disease to 54,526. This was the highest number of deaths reported in the last 3 months. But the DOH also clarified that of the 312 deaths, only 77 occurred in February this year, while 56 happened in January. There were deaths added from as far back as November and August 2020 “due to late encoding of death information to COVIDKaya,” the DOH said.

There were also 264 duplicates that were removed from the total case count, 194 of which were recoveries. “Moreover, 243 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.” Almost all provinces in the Philippines are seeing a downward trend in new COVID-19 cases, an independent research group said Sunday.

Source: news.abs-cbn.com