New 2nd highest daily tally pushes COVID-19 cases in PH above 1.95 million

The Philippines recorded a fresh second highest one-day tally of new COVID-19 cases as the country’s total caseload topped 1.95 million on Sunday, August 29.

The Department of Health (DOH) announced 18,528 new confirmed cases, bringing the total number of COVID-19 cases in the Philippines to 1,954,023.

This follows the record 19,441 new cases reported on Saturday, August 28.

The new cases push the total reported cases in August, so far, to around 365,058, excluding duplicates. This is more than double the 176,406 reported in the whole month of July alone.

The DOH also reported 101 new deaths on Sunday, bringing the death toll to 33,109.

Meanwhile, there were 17,922 additional recoveries, raising the total to 1,777,693.

Of the total cases, 143,221 or 7.3% are active. The total number of active cases on Sunday was the highest since the 203,710 recorded on April 17.

In addition, the DOH announced a positivity rate of 27.9% out of 66,225 people tested on Friday, August 27. This means that more than one in four people tested was positive for COVID-19. This is also the highest daily positivity rate so far, since the start of DOH records.

The positive cases are added to the tally of confirmed cases only after further validation. This process helps ensure that cases would not be recorded in duplicate, and that all test results had been submitted, explained the health department.

The DOH noted that seven testing laboratories were not able to submit their data in time for Sunday’s bulletin.

Earlier on Sunday, the DOH announced 516 more confirmed cases of the highly transmissible Delta variant of COVID-19. There are now at least 1,789 cases of that variant in the country. – Rappler.com