Health dept reports daily high of over 1,500 virus cases

The Philippines yesterday reported a daily high of 1,531 coronavirus infections, bringing the national tally to over 40,000 since the first case was confirmed six months ago.

The death toll from Covid-19 also rose to 1,280, with six additional deaths, the Department of Health said.

Of the additional cases, 688 were recently confirmed, while 843 were considered “late cases” or had been confirmed previously but only added now to the tally, the department said.

The country’s total was at 40,336 as of yesterday, it added. The department said the spike could have been caused by a shift to a new data extraction system that now allows 24-hour reporting by facilities that conduct tests.

Rabindra Abeyasinghe, country representative of the World Health Organisation, expressed concern over increasing infections outside the capital, which accounts for nearly half of the national total.

The “worrying phenomena” could have been the result of people returning home from areas with active transmissions, including those coming from overseas, Abeyasinghe said.

“Bringing these people back should require quarantining them, testing them and managing them so that they will not introduce new infections into the country and in their home provinces,” he said. “These particular challenges had also in, some respect, contributed to the large number of cases we are seeing in the Philippines,” he added.

Some 63,000 Filipino migrant workers have returned home amid the pandemic, while 90,000 are stranded abroad, waiting for repatriation, the labour department said.