Confirmed deaths in the Philippines due to the coronavirus disease breached the 19,000-mark on Saturday, May 15.

The Department of Health (DOH) recorded 93 COVID-19-related deaths on Saturday, which brought the total figure to 19,051. It also reported 6,739 new cases, bringing the country’s total to 1,138,187.

Active cases in the country decreased to 56,709 from the 58,986 recorded on Friday. Meanwhile, 8,952 Filipinos have newly recovered, bringing the total recoveries to 1,062,427.

The DOH said 19 duplicates were removed from the total case count. Of these, 12 are recoveries. Thirty-six cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation, the department said.

“All labs were operational on May 13 while nine labs were not able to submit their data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System,” the DOH said.

On Tuesday, May 11, the DOH reported the country’s first two cases of the “double mutant” COVID-19 India variant, but that they had already recovered from the disease. Three close contacts of one of the cases tested positive for the coronavirus, and the DOH is verifying if they also carried the COVID-19 India variant.

Experts studying the coronavirus outbreak in the country found on Saturday that the several localities that experienced higher cases during the week of May 5 to 11 were outside virus epicenter Metro Manila.

Some of these localities included Zamboanga City, Puerto Princesa City, Batangas City, and Cagayan de Oro.

In the second week of May, the Philippines also began rolling out its first stocks of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines. – Rappler.com