The streak of more than 3,000 COVID-19 cases daily continued on Sunday, September 20, as the Philippines’ tally breached 286,000.

The country’s coronavirus caseload rose to 286,743, after the Department of Health (DOH) announced 3,311 new cases from all except 7 testing laboratories.

This is the 13th straight day since September 8 that the country has reported over 3,000 new cases. 

Metro Manila remains the top source of new cases, with 1,435, followed by Negros Occidental with 261; Laguna, 231; Rizal, 204; and Cavite, 174.

The DOH also said 2,774 of the new cases occurred within the last two weeks, while the rest were from beyond that period.

Not including deaths and recoveries, 51,894 cases are active, of which 86.6% have mild symptoms, 8.7% are asymptomatic, 1.4% are severe, and 3.3% are critical.

Total recoveries from the virus stood at 229,865, with 20,021 newly reported on Sunday alone.

The high number of recoveries is due to the department’s Oplan Recovery scheme, where mild and asymptomatic cases are tagged as recoveries based on time-based and symptoms-based discharging criteria by the World Health Organization and endorsed by Philippine medical societies.

The country’s COVID-19 death toll also neared 5,000, after 55 new deaths were logged on Sunday, bringing the total fatalities to 4,984.

However, 33 of the new deaths happened in September, 17 in August, and 5 in July.

In addition, 29 of these fatalities were from Metro Manila, while 2 or more deaths were from the following regions:

• Central Visayas – 6
• Western Visayas – 5
• Calabarzon – 4
• Bicol – 3
• Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao – 3
• Ilocos Region – 2

The regions of Central Luzon, Eastern Visayas, and Caraga reported one death each.

The DOH noted that 29 duplicates, including 14 recovered cases and 1 death, were removed from the total case count, while one case was “reactivated” or reverted into the counts, following cleaning and validation processes.

The department also said 28 cases previously reported as recoveries were found to be 25 deaths and 3 active cases after further verification. – Rappler.com