MANILA — The Department of Health on Thursday reported 1,396 additional COVID-19 cases in the Philippines, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 51,754.

While this daily total is lower than the day before, when a record-high number of additional cases was recorded, it is still within the range of the relatively high number of new cases reported in the past days.

• COVID-19 cases in PH reach 51,754; no new deaths reported

Of the additional cases, 1,184 are fresh and 211 are late cases.

Fresh cases refer to those whose test results were released within the last 3 days, while late cases are those whose results were released four days ago or earlier.

Of the fresh cases, 390 are from the National Capital Region, 243 from Region 7 or Central Visayas, 67 are among repatriated Filipinos, and 484 are tagged as “others,” which may refer to cases from outside Metro Manila and those without location data.

Of the late cases, 53 are from NCR, 47 from Region 7, 3 are repatriates and 108 are tagged as others.

ZERO DEATHS DUE TO VALIDATION

The DOH also reported no new deaths on Thursday, with the total number of coronavirus-related fatalities remaining at 1,314.

The last time the country had zero new deaths was on March 19, according to the ABS-CBN Data Analytics Team.

However, the DOH later clarified that there were “no reported deaths today as the reported deaths submitted still requires validation- either the date or cause of death is missing.”

There were also 225 new recovered patients or a total of 12,813 recoveries.

The data is from 62 out of 74 DOH-accredited laboratories. Although Vergeire said the DOH accredited more laboratories, bringing their total of 83 as of Thursday.

CLUSTERS

The Philippines reached a record-high number of additional COVID-19 cases announced on Wednesday evening as the Department of Health reported 2,539 cases.

The number of additional cases has been increasing in the last week. The DOH has attributed this to the easing of community quarantine restrictions as the country gradually reopened the economy.

While Metro Manila remains the epicenter of the outbreak, parts of Cebu island have been identified as hotspots or areas with an increasing number of cases. The DOH has assured the public that the health sector is still able to manage the rise in cases.

The DOH has counted 379 COVID-19 clusters or areas where the virus has spread.

Most of the clusters are in NCR (122 clusters) and Region 7 or Central Visayas (114). There are also some in Eastern Visayas (35), Calabarzon (34), Davao Region (14), Central Luzon (13), Western Visayas (13), Caraga (8), Bicol Region (6), BARMM (5), Zamboanga Peninsula (4), Northern Mindanao (4), Mimaropa (3), CAR (2), and Soccsksargen (2).

It also reported clustering of cases in health facilities, mostly in NCR with 29 clusters. The rest are in Eastern Visayas (6), Bicol (2), Central Luzon (2), CAR (2), Central Visayas (1), Cagayan Valley (1), Calabarzon (1), Davao Region (1), and Western Visayas (1).

As of July 7, the case doubling time for the country is at 7.98.

“This means that it takes more than a week for the number of cases to double and have enough resources to address the current needs,” Vergeire said. “We were able to do this when we were given a window to ramp up our health system capacity during the first months of the ECQ, and this has helped us in our covid response.”

Some 12 million people worldwide have been infected with COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus dashboard. More than 6.5. million of those people have already recovered while almost 550,000 have died.