MANILA — The Philippines' COVID-19 mortality rate remains lower than the global average, Malacañang said on Tuesday, after the country's total tally of coronavirus infections breached 1 million.

Of the Philippines' 1,006,428 COVID-19 cases, 914,952 are recoveries and 16,853 are deaths, said Palace spokesman Harry Roque.

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"Kailangan tingnan natin ang buong larawan at hindi lang isang numero," Roque said in a press briefing.

(We need to look at the whole picture and not just one number.)

"Kung ikukumpara n’yo po ang ating 16,000 deaths, napakababa po talaga ng ating mga death. Nasa 1.67 [percent] lang po ang ating case fatality rate, samantalang sa buong mundo, ang case fatality rate po ay pumapalo sa 2.1 percent," he added.

(If you compare our 16,000 deaths, the number is really low. Our case fatality rate is at 1.67 percent, while around the world, the case fatality rate hits 2.1 percent.)

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The recoveries, meanwhile, prove that medical frontliners are good with their job and the country is "managing" COVID-19 cases, he said.

Video courtesy of PTV

The government tightened quarantine restrictions in Manila and surrounding provinces since late March to try to stem a surge in cases blamed on more contagious COVID-19 variants.

But while daily infections have eased slightly, they have still averaged more than 9,000, against 5,525 in March and 213 per day in April 2020, health ministry data showed.

In the capital region, an urban sprawl of 16 cities and a municipality home to at least 13 million people, intensive care unit (ICU) capacity is above 70 percent while 57 percent of isolation beds and 64 percent of ward beds for COVID-19 patients were occupied as of April 26.

In a bid to admit more patients, tents were turned into COVID-19 emergency rooms at the National Kidney Transplant Institute, a government hospital in Manila.

"All in all, we waited for almost six hours. It's a long, difficult wait," COVID-19 patient Roel Galan told Reuters, speaking outside a makeshift emergency room.

Roque said on Monday that 289 additional ICU beds would be made available in the capital.

To free up beds for severe COVID-19 patients, the Philippine Red Cross said on Monday it has set up field hospital tents and converted unused classrooms and buildings into quarantine facilities to care for patients with moderate and mild symptoms.

Dr. John Wong, a member of the government's coronavirus task force's data analytics team, said authorities must ramp up vaccinations to contain the virus and allow the economy to reopen.

He said 350,000 people needed to be vaccinated a day so the government could meet its target of immunizing 70 million, or a third of the country's population, this year.

Since the Philippines started its vaccination drive in March, 1.5 million people have received a first dose of vaccine, with close to 231,000 people getting two doses, officials said.

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– With a report from Reuters