By BETHEENA UNITE
Cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Philippines rose to 307,288 after 3,073 new confirmed cases were recorded Monday, the Department of Health said. There are 163 new recovered patients, bringing the nationwide recoveries to 252,665 while 37 fatalities were reported, thus taking the death toll to 5,381.
According to the Health department, of the 3,073 new confirmed cases, 2,800 or 91 percent occurred within the recent 14 days (September 15to September 28).
The top regions with cases in the recent two weeks were the National Capital Region (NCR) with 1,055 or 38 percent, Region 4A with 722 or 26 percent and Region 6 with 277 or 10 percent.
In a recent data from the department, NCR and Region 4A were among the regions with the highest number of areas with clustering of cases, contributing 27 percent and 20 percent clustering in the country, respectively.
Moreover, of the 37 deaths, 26 occurred in September, 5 in August, 4 in July, 1 in May and 1 in April. Deaths were from Region 6 with 21 or 57 percent, NCR with 8 or 22 percent, Region 4A with 4 or 11 percent, Region 12 with 2 or 5 percent, Region 3 with 1 or 3 percent, and BARMMwith 1 or 3 percent.
Eleven duplicates were removed from the total case count, the department said. Of these, six were recovered cases. Two cases previously tagged as recovered were reclassified to deaths after final validation.
The health agency noted that six laboratories were not able to submit their data to the COVID-19 Data Repository System (CDRS) on September 27, 2020.
Meanwhile, the department disclosed that the country has enough test kits until the end of the year.
