Philippines logs 6,637 new COVID-19 cases, 191 more fatalities

The Philippines on Thursday reported 6,637 new COVID-19 cases, raising the country's total tally to 1,080,172, as one laboratory failed to submit data on time.

The Department of Health said the low number of infections on Thursday was due to the low samples laboratories received on Tuesday.

The DOH said this brought the active cases in the country to 63,170,  of which 94.3% are mild, 1.9% are asymptomatic, 1.6% are severe, and 1.2% are in critical condition.

The DOH said total recoveries also rose to 999,011 with 6,091 new ones, while the death toll climbed to 17,991 with 191 more fatalities.

Twenty duplicates were removed from the total case count, while 109 cases previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.

Data also showed that 64% of the country's intensive care unit beds are utilized, while 43% of the mechanical ventilators are in use.

Meanwhile, vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. said on Wednesday that the COVAX Facility is expected to deliver in May millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines by British firm AstraZeneca and US company Pfizer.

Galvez said he expected the government to receive 1.3 million vaccine doses of Pfizer vaccines in May in addition to the two million doses from AstraZeneca.

The Philippines has so far administered 2,065,245 vaccine doses as of May 4. Over 1.7 million Filipinos were inoculated with the first dose of vaccines.—LDF, GMA News