People wait in front of the giant Christmas Tree as Resorts World Manila opens Grand Fiesta Manila at the Newport Mall in Pasay City on November 11, 2021. George Calvelo, ABS-CBN News
MANILA (UPDATE)— The Philippines on Friday confirmed 1,894 more COVID-19 infections, with the positivity rate reaching over the 5 percent-mark after 2 straight days of being below the threshold, data showed.
The country now has 2,813,115 total reported novel coronavirus cases, of which 29,105 or 1 percent are still active infections, the Department of Health (DOH) said.
This is the 11th straight day that new infections counted less than 3,000, the ABS-CBN Investigative and Research Group (IRG) noted.
This is also the 5th time in that same period where the daily case tally fell below 2,000. The researchers said the duplicates and reclassified cases in previous days have already been removed.
Active cases were also below 30,000 for the 3rd straight day, the IRG said.
"Prior to this week, the last time that the number of active cases fell below 30,000 was more than 8 months ago, or last March 1, when there were 29,757 active cases," the researchers added, saying that duplicate cases have already been considered in their analysis.
Positivity rate, meanwhile, is at 5.5 percent, the latest bulletin showed. This is based on samples of 43,591 individuals tested on Wednesday.
ABS-CBN Data Analytics head Edson Guido observed that this rose after the country posted a less than 5 percent positivity rate in the past 2 days.
The World Health Organization's (WHO) benchmark for positivity rate is 5 percent or lower for at least two weeks. A relatively high rate means more people should be tested for the coronavirus.
There were also 170 more deaths and 1,421 new recoveries, DOH said.
These raised the country's total fatalities to 45,035 and total recuperations to 2,738,975.
The day's fatalities included 145 deaths first tagged as recoveries, the DOH said.
New recoveries on Friday is the lowest in over 3 weeks or since Oct. 20, when the agency registered 228 recoveries, ABS-CBN's research unit noted.
Two laboratories failed to submit data on time.
A total of 27 duplicates have been excluded from the running tally, of which 23 are recoveries and 1 is a fatality, the DOH said.
The capital region shifted to Alert Level 2 from Alert Level 3 beginning Nov. 5 until Nov. 21, allowing more businesses to reopen, including cinemas.
The region remains under the "low risk" classification for COVID-19, an independent research group said earlier this week.
A 3-day vaccination drive is expected to take place from Nov. 29 to Dec. 1 to ramp up the country's inoculation rate. Philippine authorities aim to administer at least 5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses daily during the said period.
The Philippines has so far fully vaccinated 30.8 million of its 109-million population. The government aims to vaccinate at least 54 million by yearend.
WATCH