Cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Philippines grew to 220,819 as a total of 3,446 new confirmed cases were recorded Monday, August 31, the Department of Health said.
There are also 165 recovered patients, taking the total recoveries nationwide to 157,562 while the death toll is at 3,558 with 38 new fatalities.
The Health department said the new confirmed cases were reported based on the total tests done by 97 out of 110 current operational laboratories in the country.
Of the 3,446 reported cases today, 2,965 or 86 percent occurred within the recent 14 days (August 18 to August 31, 2020).
The top regions with cases in the recent two weeks were the National Capital Region (NCR) with 1,528 or 52 percent of the total new confirmed cases, Region 4A with 442, and Region 3 with 275.
Moreover, of the 38 deaths, 31 or 82 percent occurred in August, four or 11 percent in July, and three or 8 percent in June. Deaths were from NCR with 19 or 50 percent, Region 4A with nine or 24 percent, Region 7 with four or 11 percent, Region 3 with two or 5 percent, Region 6 with two or 5 percent, Region 1 and Region 9 with one case apiece.
“There were 23 duplicates that were removed from the total case count. Of these, four recovered cases have been removed. Moreover, there were two cases that were previously reported as recovered but after final validation, they were deaths,” the department said.
On Monday, the Health department stated that they no longer have backlogs for validation, noting that those reports from previous months were only submitted by the laboratories recently and are immediately validated.
“We have no backlogs for validation for the longest time already. We are now able to validate within 24 hours and we report it the following day,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a press briefing Monday.
“Ang nakikita natin sa mga reports ngayon na meron pang paisa-isa ng March, April, dahil ngayon lang nai-submit ng laboratory so kaya ‘yan ngayon pumapasok sa sistema (What we are seeing in the reports are few cases from March, April because the laboratories are only able to submit the data now),” Vergeire added.
Meanwhile, half of the intensive care unit beds dedicated for COVID-19 cases in the entire country are occupied as of August 31 while 46 percent of isolation beds, 51 percent of ward beds, and 29 percent of ventilators exclusively for COVID-19 patients are also being utilized at present.