MANILA (UPDATE) — The number of people in the Philippines who died due to COVID-19 has climbed past 16,000 on Monday as total coronavirus infections in the country reached 945,745, data from the health department showed.

According to the latest COVID-19 bulletin of the Department of Health, the death toll climbed by 88 to 16,048, accounting for 1.7 percent of the cumulative total cases.

The DOH recorded 9,628 additional COVID-19 cases, and 9,266 new recoveries. The total number of people who have recovered from the disease is 788,322.

The number of new recoveries is relatively high for a Monday, according to the ABS-CBN Data Analytics Team, since the DOH normally reports its “mass recovery” on Sundays. The mass recovery system involves tagging asymptomatic and mild COVID-19 cases as recovered after 14 days.

• DOH: Safeguards in place for time-based tagging of COVID-19 recoveries

The number of newly reported cases, which the lowest in the last 5 days, does not include data from 4 testing laboratories that failed to submit results on time.

Active cases in the country stood at 141,375 or 14.9% of the total recorded infections.

Of those currently battling the disease, 96.9% have mild symptoms, 1.5% are asymptomatic, 0.43% have moderate symptoms, 0.7% have severe symptoms, and 0.5% are in critical condition.

Meanwhile, a total of 16 cases, 9 tagged as recovered, were removed from the official count due to duplicate entries.

There were also 19 cases initially tagged as recovered that turned out to be deaths.

The country has been seeing a surge in COVID-19 cases due to the variants of the virus and non-compliance with health protocols, especially in Metro Manila and nearby provinces.

According to the health department bulletin, 66 percent of intensive care unit beds for COVID-19 patients in the country have been utilized, as well as 49 percent of the isolation beds and 56 percent of ward beds.

Forty-seven percent of mechanical ventilators in the country have also been used up.

The utilization rate is much higher for the national Capital Region, which has logged 84% of ICU beds occupied, as well as 63% of isolation beds, 70% of ward beds, and 61% of ventilators.

As the Philippine government struggles to curb the spread of COVID-19, it has also received criticism for the slow rollout of vaccines, which it attributes to the limited global supply.

Of the 3 million vaccines received by the country, only around 1.4 million have been administered after rollout started in March.

There are 57.6 million people currently infected with COVID-19 worldwide. Since the start of the pandemic, 141.4 million people have contracted the disease, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus dashboard. Of those, 3 million have died and 80.8 million have recovered.

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