ABS-CBN Data Analytics Group
MANILA - The Philippines confirmed 18,528 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, the second-highest tally, bringing the country’s total to 1,954,023.
The country also logged its highest positivity rate of 27.9 percent, out of 66,225 tests conducted on Aug. 27. This was way above the World Health Organization’s prescribed 5 percent positivity rate in which the outbreak is under control.
The Department of Health meanwhile also reported 17,922 new recoveries, pushing the total number of Filipinos who recovered from the disease to 1,777,693.
This means that the country has a total of 143,221 active cases as of 4 p.m. Sunday.
One hundred on1 more deaths were reported from COVID-19 on Sunday, bringing the disease’s death toll in the Philippines to 33,109.
More cases of the Delta variant of COVID-19 were also confirmed on Sunday, with the tally of the highly infectious mutation now at 1,789.
ABS-CBN Data Analytics Group
Meanwhile, the country struggles to ramp up its vaccine rollout. The government has said that it wants to inoculate 70 million Filipinos by the end of the year.
ABS-CBN News however has been tracking the number of vaccinations since March, and as of Aug. 25, only 13,371,734 Filipinos have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. This means that the government has reached just 18.87 percent of the revised target after almost 6 months.
After plunging into its worst economic contraction since World War, the country emerged from recession in the second quarter.
Government economic managers however have lowered the growth target for the year, citing the tighter restrictions reimposed to check the spread of the Delta variant.
Worldwide, the novel coronavirus has infected almost 216 million people and caused almost 4.5 million deaths since it was first reported in Wuhan, China in late 2019 according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
The United States remains the most badly affected country with over 38.7 million infections and over 637,000 deaths.
India is the second most badly affected country, with 32.6 million infections. But in terms of deaths, Brazil has recorded more fatalities than India, with the South American country reporting over 579,000 COVID-19 deaths against India’s 437,000 confirmed fatalities.
The country’s first COVID-19 case was a 38-year-old Chinese woman from Wuhan, China.
The first COVID-19 death outside of China, was also recorded in the Philippines last year.