Record-high 26,303 new Philippine COVID-19 infections push active cases over 185,000

The Philippines on Saturday reported 26,303 new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infections, the highest recorded since the start of the pandemic, as two laboratories failed to submit data on time.

The previous highest daily case count recorded was 22,820 on Thursday.

According to the Department of Health (DOH), this brought the nationwide tally to 2,206,021 and active cases to 185,706.

Of these cases, 85.3% were mild, 10.2% were asymptomatic, 1.3% were severe, and 0.6% were in critical condition.

However, the DOH said that of the 26,303 new cases, 1,608 should have been included in the September 10 data update.

“While some technical issues have been resolved by DICT, there are CDRS data not yet included in CK and remain unavailable for extraction.  This has led to some delays in the inclusion of new data for cases, deaths, and recoveries,” the department said.

“While we await full resolution of this issue, we may observe some delays in inclusion of some data in our topline numbers in the coming days but we are managing this by generating data from CDRS and submitted line lists by our disease reporting units.”

The DOH also announced that total recoveries climbed to 1,985,337 after 16,013 more patients recovered from the illness.

Meanwhile, 79 new fatalities brought the death toll to 34,978.

A total of 52 duplicate cases were also removed from the total case count.

“Moreover, 32 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation,” the DOH said.

Based on reports on September 9, the Philippines was also able to test 75,688 individuals, of whom 27.6% tested positive for the illness.

Meanwhile, health experts urged the DOH to look into its reporting system to check why there was a "disconnect" between their data and the COVID-19 situation on the ground.

This was after the Health Department admitted that there was such a divide last week. — DVM, GMA News