Philippines posts record-high 18,332 new COVID-19 cases; active tally at 130,350

The Philippines on Monday registered a record-high 18,332 COVID-19 new infections on Monday, pushing the nation's total tally to 1,857,646.

This is higher than the August 20, 2021 data of 17,231 new cases, which was previously tagged as the highest daily case count of the country.

According to Department of Health data, the fresh cases raised the active infections to 130,350, which is the highest since April 1 which reported 138,948 active cases.

Of the active cases, 94.8% are mild, 2.5% are asymptomatic, 1.2% are severe, and 0.6% are in critical condition.

Meanwhile, the health department recorded  151 more patients who lost to the disease. This brought the death tally to 31,961.

The total number of recoveries reached  1,695,335 with 13,794 new ones.

Philippines' positivity rate was at 24.9% with 64,957 conducted COVID-19 tests, still far off the international standard of less than 5% positivity rate.

After final validation, DOH once again revised the total case count after removing 321 duplicates including 316 recoveries.

Further, 68 cases previously tagged as recoveries were rebranded as deaths.

Also, three laboratories failed to submit their data to the country's health department.

The DOH said in the past 14 days, these laboratories account for 0.5% of positive patients and 0.2% of samples tested in the COVID-19 Document Repository System (CDRS).

As for the hospital capacity, occupancy rate for ICU beds nationwide reached 73% while utilization rate of mechanical ventilators was at 54%.

In Metro Manila, 72% of ICU beds are in use while of 58% mechanical ventilators are utilized.—LDF, GMA News