Cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the country grew to 290,190 after 3,475 new confirmed cases were reported by the Department of Health Monday, September 21.
The death toll increased to 4,999 as 15 new fatalities were recorded. Active cases are now at 54,958.
There are also 400 new recovered patients from the disease, bringing the total recoveries nationwide to 230,233.
According to the DOH, of the 3,475 newly-reported cases, 2,648 or 76 occurred within the recent 14 days (September 8 to September 21).
The top regions with cases in the last two weeks were the National Capital Region (NCR) with 1,182, Region 4A with 560 and Region 3 with 246.
Meanwhile, of the 15 deaths, eight occurred in September, six in August and one in April. The reported deaths were from NCR with nine, Region 6 with three, Region 4A with two, and Region 8 with one.
The department said eight duplicates were removed from the total case count. Of these, 19 were recovered cases. Thirteen cases previously reported as recovered were reclassified as death (12) and active (1) cases after final validation.
Moreover, nine laboratories were not able to submit their data to the COVID-19 Data Repository System (CDRS) on September 20, the department added.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire noted that laboratory submissions were able to cope with the backlogs.
“In the past days, we noticed that we were able to receive most of these backlogs already. We are already getting on time submissions. Meaning, the numbers we are seeing now are not really due mostly to these laboratory submissions,” Vergeire said.
“Maaring malaking percent nitong nakukuha natin daily galing sa labas ng NCR pero tinitingnan namin (A huge percentage of the data that we get could be coming from outside the NCR), we are trying to analyze the numbers right now,” she added.
The Health official noted that of the additional cases from September 7 to 20, 43 percent were from NCR.
“We are continuously analyzing the data but one thing we can tell you is that the labs were able to cope with the submissions already. They were able to comply with the mandatory fields at the COVID KAYA,” Vergeire said.