(Eagle News) — COVID-19 cases in the Philippines rose to 2,847,486 after the Department of Health reported 3,617 additional cases.
The figure is an increase from the 2,961 additional cases reported on Friday, Dec. 31.
According to the DOH, two laboratories were not operational on December 30, 2021, while six labs did not submit recent data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System (CDRS).
The DOH said of the total cases, 17374 were active.
Of these, 673 were asymptomatic, 11603 were mild, 3124 were moderate, 1635 were severe, and 339 were critical.
Recoveries rose to 2,778,567 with the addition of 468 recoveries.
The COVID-19 death toll is now at 51545 with the addition of 43 deaths.
On Friday, Dec. 31, the DOH cautioned against the possibility of an “exponential growth” in the number of COVID-19 cases in the country following the detection of three local Omicron variant cases, which it said could mean there was already a local transmission of the highly transmissible variant in the country, and the “continued decreased adherence” to minimum public health safety protocols.
So far, the Philippines has reported 14 Omicron variant cases, including the three local ones.
The OCTA research group has reported a National Capital Region COVID-19 positivity rate of 21%, which could mean a total more or less of 4,000 additional cases on January 1, 2022.
The positivity rate refers to the percentage of people who were found positive for COVID-19 of the total number of individuals tested.
Metro Manila will be under an alert level 3 from Jan. 3 to 15 as a result of the increase in cases.
