PH LOGS 7,625 NEW COVID-19 CASES

The Department of Health (DOH) said it recorded 7,625 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, the third straight day in a row that new cases fell below 8,000. The new cases bring the total case count in the country to 2,705,792.

In its daily case bulletin, the DOH reported 78,999 active cases. Of this number, the majority or 80.6 percent are mild cases, 6.4 percent asymptomatic, 1.7 percent in critical condition, 3.9 percent severe and 7.38 percent moderate.

The DOH also said another 13,363 had since recovered from the disease, pushing the total number of survivors to 2,586,369. But another 203 died, bringing the fatality count to 40,424.

The positivity rate as of Wednesday is 14.9 percent, which means around 7,398 of the 49,655 individuals tested on that day tested positive for the virus.

Hospitals are also slowly starting to get decongested, with 66 percent of all intensive care unit beds and 49 percent of all COVID-19 ward beds occupied.

Three labs failed to submit their data on time, while 65 duplicate cases were removed from the total case count. Meanwhile, 109 cases previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths following final validation.

The DOH on Friday said the downgrading of the alert level status in the National Capital Region (NCR) was not appealable.

“This is not subject to discussion or debate,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said during an online briefing, adding that alert levels under the pilot system were based on “scientific metrics.”

“When you look at the region’s case trends, it shows that the two-week growth rate is negative, the average daily attack rate has also gone down, and they are at moderate risk,” said Vergeire, explaining the rationale behind the decision to downgrade NCR from alert level 4 to alert level 3 beginning Oct. 16.