By MINKA KLAUDIA S. TIANGCO
The Department of Health (DoH) said Friday the total number of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in the country breached the 180,000-mark after 4,000 additional cases were reported.
In all, the Philippines now has 182,365 COVID-19 confirmed cases after the health department announced of 4,786 additional cases.
Of the total number, 64,906 are active cases.
Metro Manila still has the highest number of cases with 2,716 cases followed by Cavite (267), Laguna (222), Batangas (185), and Rizal (185).
Meanwhile, 616 recoveries were also reported, bringing the total number of recovered patients to 114,519.
The COVID-19 death toll in the country stands at 2,940 after 59 mortalities were reported.
In a statement, the DOH said it observed a “decreasing trend” in the overall percent of occupancy of COVID-19 beds in the country.
While a plateau was seen for Region IV-A, a decreasing trend was observed in the National Capital Region and Region III, while Region VII has maintained a decreasing trend.
It also noted some inaccuracies in its previously reported data.
“There were four hundred forty-three (443) duplicates that were removed from the total case count. Of these, one hundred eighty-nine (189) recovered cases have been removed,” the case bulletin read.
“Moreover, there were twenty-two (22) cases that were previously reported as recovered but after final validation, they were deaths (6) and active (16) cases. There’s also two (2) cases that were previously reported as death but have been validated as active cases,” it added.
The health department explained that the reported additional cases were based on data from laboratories that conduct polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing.
However, there were instances when the laboratories committed encoding errors, resulting in the mistakes in the reporting of cases.
In terms of duplicate cases, the DOH said they only remove duplicate names from their data after validating with the local government unit and regional epidemiology and surveillance units.
“We are continuously enhancing our processes of tagging recoveries and deaths and we have strongly reminded our LGUs of the need to immediately report deaths and ensure that details of deaths are complete, as well as update cases who have already recovered, so that we can improve our reporting of recoveries and deaths,” it said.
