The country recorded less than 2,000 cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, bringing the national caseload to over 387,000. 

There were 1,772 new cases of COVID-19 detected in the Philippines as shown in the latest case update of the Department of Health (DOH), pushing the country’s cumulative total to 387,161.

The DOH noted that only 30,876 are active cases, where 82.5 percent are mild, 10 percent are asymptomatic, 2.7 percent are severe, and 4.8 percent are in critical condition.

Pampanga tallied the highest number of new cases with 154. Quezon City followed with 115 new infected residents, Laguna with 83, Baguio City with 70, and City of Manila with 69.

There were 153 new patients who have recovered from COVID-19, bringing the total to 348,967, which is 90.1 percent of the nationwide caseload. 

However, the death toll jumped to 7,318 after 49 more fatalities were recorded. 

“Eleven duplicates were removed from the total case count. Of these, three were recovered cases. Moreover, 13 cases previously tagged as recovered were reclassified as deaths,” the DOH said. 

In a press briefing last Monday, Nov. 2, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire noted improvements in the country’s fight against the pandemic. 

“Ngayon nakikita natin yung pagbaba ng kaso (Now we are seeing a decline in cases), we are just averaging about 500 plus cases a day in the National Capital Region,” said Vergeire comparing it to previous months where the NCR had about 2,000 to 2,500 cases daily. 

“When we talked about the whole country, we were averaging also before, mataas na mga kaso, pero ngayon nakikita natin, yung ating averages for our country would just be about 1,800 in a day,” she added. 

Vergeire also expressed hopes that all localities in the country would be under a more lenient community quarantine level by next year. 

“Our target for our milestones would be... hopefully by next year, end of first quarter lahat na ng local governments natin nasa MGCQ (modified general community quarantine) status na,” she said.