PHL Covid cases breach 20K, set new daily record

THE Philippines reported 22,366 new Covid-19 cases on Monday, the highest singleday increase ever recorded since the start of the pandemic, bringing the total number of infections in the country to 1,976,202.

As of 4 p.m. on August 30, the Department of Health (DOH) also logged 16,864 recoveries and 222 deaths.

Of the total number of infections, 7.5 percent (148,594) are active, 90.8 percent (1,794,278) have recovered, and 1.69 percent (33,330) have died.

The DOH reported that the top 3 regions with new cases reported from August 22 to 28 are: National Capital Region with 29,654; Region 4A with 25,082; and Region 3 with 14,738.

There were 187 duplicates removed from the total case count. Of these, 174 are recoveries and 1 is a death.

Moreover, 105 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.

All laboratories were operational on August 28, 2021 while two laboratories were not able to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System.

Based on data in the last 14 days, the two non-reporting laboratories contribute, on average, 0.1 percent of samples tested and 0.1 percent of positive individuals.

High reproduction rate

THE OCTA Research Group said the breach in the Covid-19 cases was expected due to the still high reproduction rate of the virus nationwide.

However, they noted the rate of the increase is expected to slow down next month once the effect of the latest two-week lockdown in the National Capital Region (NCR) and other areas seeing rising infections starts to become apparent.

In an television interview, OCTA Research Group member Guido David said they project the local reproduction rate for Covid-19 in Ncr—which remains the epicenter of the virus in the country—will start to drop from 1.47 to below 1 by the middle of next month.

The World Health Organization defines reproduction number as the average number of people infected by one person in a susceptible population.

“By around September 13 to 14 based on projections, the reproduction might go down then, so this means the number of infections will also start to go down,” David said.

“For now, because we already reached 19,000 we will breach the 20,000 cases per day for the entire country,” David said.

David, however, said they are optimistic the number of daily cases will not go beyond 30,000.

“If there will be a downward trend in Metro Manila, it [daily cases] will peak at 25,000,” David said.

OCTA noted the slower pace could only be achieved if the public continues to strictly follow minimum health standards.