[Disclaimer: Whatever is written here is based on information released by the Department of Health at the time of publication. Whatever changes the DoH makes in their data later on…well that’s a different story in itself and as they say in their disclaimer: “the total cases reported may be subject to change as these numbers undergo constant cleaning and validation.”]

It was too good to last.

With data coming from 93 of 113 laboratories, the Health Agency reports 3,714 recently announced cases today. Breaking the mini-streak of good news for the past two days.

While NCR owned 1,797 (48 percent) of the total cases, it was Negros Occidental that came in second, reporting 390 cases today.

Other provinces in the top five were Batangas, Laguna and Cavite.

Forty-five cases were deleted from the case count.

Of the 3,714 announced cases today, 3,259 were recent (88 percent) while the remaining 455 were backlogs, mostly from August 1-21 (380). Yes, there are still backlogs all the way back to March.

For the week August 22-September 4, NCR had 1,488 cases (82.8 percent of the 1,797 total cases reported today).

Only three other regions report three digit numbers: Region IVA with 829, Region VI with 446 and Region III with 214 cases.

In spite of the 1,088 recoveries, the recovery rate dipped to 69.2 percent. Lower than the global recovery rate. The case fatality rate remains at 1.61 percent with 49 reported deaths.

NCR had 31 deaths (63.3 percent) followed by Central Visayas with 7.

Of the 65 deaths, 5 occurred in September (it’s only September 4 today so this is a surprise for early reporting), while 35 came from the month of August. There were 4 deaths in July, 3 in June and 2 way back in May.

With 115 testing facilities now, the DoH reports 2,564,662 individuals tested as of September 3, 2020. This is around 2.35 percent of the total population.

THE DATA YESTERDAY

Testing capacity

As of September 2, 2020, a total of 2,539,354 individuals (~2.32 percent of the population) have been tested.

There were 3,621 positives from 34,646 individuals tested – bringing the daily positive rate up at 10.5 percent from a previous day of 9.2 percent. [Notice that the increase in number of positive individuals will be reflected 1-2 days later from the Health Agency’s 4 o’clock habit daily COVID-19 bulletin.]The cumulative positivity rate is stable at 10.6 percent.

Of the 3,621 positives that day, 70.5 percent (2,554) were from 38 of 40 testing centers in the NCR.

The summary

As of yesterday, the Philippines had 228,403 confirmed cases with NCR owning 56 percent of the total cases in the country.

NCR had 818 newly announced cases (not necessarily all recent) making up 41.2 percent of the total cases yesterday.

Regions IVA, VI, X and VII rounded up the top five.

All the other remaining regions had only double digits, including Region VII. 

There were 16 newly announced cases among repatriates. 

Thirty-five people had no tagged location at regional level.

The unknowns

There were 42 (2.1 percent) individuals with untagged locations yesterday. Thirty-five patients had no known region. One from Region IVA had no known province. While the remaining had no known city/municipality.

The known

NCR had 818 newly announced cases (657 of which were recent).

Two cities had triple digits – Quezon City with 112 and Manila with 106. The remaining 15 cities had less than 100 cases. Valenzuela, Pasig, Caloocan, Malabon, Marikina and Navotas has more than 50 cases.

The cities of Taguig, Makati, Las Piñas, Parañaque, Pasay and Muntinlupa reported less than 50 cases.

Pateros and Mandaluyong had single digit, while San Juan had ZERO cases.

There was only one individual with no tagged location at this level.

The following provinces had the highest cases in their respective region: Cavite for Region IVA, Negros Occidental for Region VI, and Lanao del Norte for Region X. Cebu had 73 cases but the total number of cases in Region VII was only 75.

The DoH announced 478 new cases for Region IVA yesterday with only the province of Laguna reporting triple digits.

Eighteen cities/municipalities reported triple digits with the city of Imus in Cavite coming in first for the first time with 43 cases.

The province of Negros Occidental led significantly with 122 of the 165 cases in Region VI. Bacolod City owned 96 (79 percent) of the cases in the province.

Region X was the surprise of the day with Lanao del Norte reporting the highest cases among the provinces in the region, and Iligan City logging in 59 of the 62 (95.2 percent) of cases.

As of yesterday, the average new cases in the Philippines had a 7-day average low of 3,266 cases/day and 7-day average of 65 deaths/day.

THE WORLD

The global case fatality rate is at 3.3 percent and recoveries at 70.5 percent. As the number of confirmed cases increase, the fatality and recovery rates slow down. There are also lesser deaths being reported globally. [Recovery rates are not very reliable indicators because they are subjective—based on the country’s definition of how and when they consider patients ‘recovered’.]

The total number of global cases recorded yesterday was the second highest since the start of the pandemic – 290,092 in a single day. The number of new deaths was steady at less than 6,000.

The United States has now close to 6.3 million cases with California, Texas and Florida reporting the highest numbers yesterday. The US had the highest number of reported global deaths yesterday – 1,094.

Brazil remained in second and has surpassed 4 million cases with close to 50,000 cases yesterday.

While India stays in third spot with close to 4 million cases globally it surpasses its previous record with more than 84,000 newly reported cases yesterday. If this trend continues, it will overtake Brazil for second place in a day or two.

Top ten countries with new confirmed cases reported for September 3, 2020 are as follows:

Two European nations are back in the top ten highest contributors to the pool of coronavirus cases in the continent – Spain with 8,959 new cases and France with 7,157.

The top ten countries with highest deaths reported for September 3, 2020 were as follows:

Indonesia landed in 9th place among the top ten countries with deaths announced overnight.

The increase in total cases today will most likely land us back in the top ten countries contributing to the pool of coronavirus cases in the world tomorrow.

Tomorrow will be another day. And another story to tell.