THE Department of Health (DOH) reported less than 5,000 new coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases in four of the last seven days, pushing the number of active cases below 50,000 again.
In its case bulletin issued at past 4 p.m. Monday, May 24, 2021, DOH recorded 4,973 new infections, bringing the Philippines’ total Covid-19 caseload to 1,184,706. DOH said 21 duplicates were removed from the case count.
Of the total, 48,917 were active cases in hospitals and isolation facilities.
This marked the second time that active cases fell below 50,000. On May 19, active cases declined to below 50,000 for the first time since reaching a peak of 203,710 on April 17.
However, the positivity rate remained elevated at 12.8 percent, more than double the World Health Organization (WHO) benchmark of 5.0 percent for the safe reopening of an economy.
Six laboratories were not able to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System (CDRS). These labs contributed 1.1 percent of the samples tested in the last 14 days and 1.3 percent of the positive results for the period.
There were 39 additional mortalities, pushing the Covid-19 death toll closer to 20,000. Eighteen cases previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths.
As of May 24, DOH has listed 19,983 mortalities from Covid-19. The case fatality rate remained at 1.69 percent for the fifth consecutive day.
There were 6,666 new recoveries based on DOH’s time-based recovery strategy, which tags mild and asymptomatic cases with no symptoms for 10 straight days as recovered.
These brought the total recoveries to 1,115,806.
New cases also fell below 5,000 in a day on May 18 to 19, and on May 23, when technical issues affecting the CovidKaya surveillance system excluded some cases from the DOH case bulletin.
DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire, in a media forum around Monday noon, said they had asked the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) to help fix the system.
She was hopeful that the system would be fixed by the time the case bulletin is issued.
The bulletin issued at past 4 p.m. Monday, however, did not advise whether the technical issues have been resolved. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)