MANILA—The number of recovered COVID-19 patients in the country continued to increase, reaching another record high of 82 such cases on Thursday.

The Department of Health announced that there are now 435 total COVID-19 recoveries. Meanwhile, the number of new fatalities was around 13, bringing the sum COVID-19 deaths to 362.

The department also recorded 207 new confirmed COVID-19 cases with the cumulative number of patients now at 5,660.

Since April 11, the number of new reported COVID-19 recoveries has trended upward.

This came as the DOH said it has begun to include in their count patients who have undergone home quarantine. Before this week, the number of recoveries was only based on patients confined and discharged by hospitals.

Dr. Beverly Ho, special assistant to the health secretary, said that before undergoing a repeat test patients who show clinical improvement and resolution of symptoms are allowed to go home.

“But they still need to remain isolated for 14 more days,” she said, because their experts said that “the PCR test will not be effective in capturing the presence of a virus in the patient especially if they are on their way to recovery already.”

“Our data on recoveries currently reflects only those who did the repeat test,” she added.

Ho reiterated that the tally of recoveries include patients who were confined at hospitals and were quarantined at home.

“Ang ating mga recoveries ay maaaring tumaas dahil hindi pa dito kasama ang . . . mga pasyenteng clinically recovered or ’yung mga pinayagan nang umuwi ng kanilang doktor na mag-home quarantine na,” she said.

(The number of recoveries can still go up because we haven’t included patients who have clinically recovered or were allowed by their doctors to undergo home quarantine.)

She said COVID-19 patients take about 13 and a half days to 33 days to fully recover.

Ho said that of the 5,660 cases, 4,237 or 75% have mild symptoms, 530 (9%) are asymptomatic, 65 (1%) have severe symptoms and 31 or (less than 1%) are in critical condition. The rest are included in the list of recoveries or fatalities.

As of Thursday, the DOH also said that its accredited laboratories have conducted 42,215 tests on individuals, 6,188 of which were positive cases and 35,985 turned out negative.

“Ang total positive case ay maaaring masmataas kaysa sa total confirmed cases dahil ito ay dumadaan pa sa case validation and processing,” Ho explained.

(The positive cases can be higher than the number of total confirmed cases because the tests still undergo case validation and processing.)

According to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus dashboard, there have been more than 2 million confirmed COVID-19 cases from 185 countries since the pandemic started. Of that number, more than 500,000 recovered and more than 130,000 have died.