The Philippines logged 22,366 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, its highest single-day tally since the pandemic began early last year, bringing the total number of infections to 1,976,202.
Health officials said there were 222 new fatalities, bringing the COVID-19 death toll to 33,330—or 1.69 percent of all cases.
The Department of Health (DOH) reported 16,864 new recoveries, bringing to 1,794,278 the number of patients who have recovered from the disease, representing 90.8 percent of all cases.
That left 148,594 active cases, 95.7 percent of which were mild, 1.7 percent of which were asymptomatic, 0.6 percent of which were critical, 1.1 percent of which were severe, and 0.97 percent of which were moderate.
The positivity rate was at 27.5 percent, the DOH said.
Nationwide, 74 percent of ICU beds, 65 percent of isolation beds, 70 percent of ward beds, and 53 percent of ventilators, were in use.
In Metro Manila, 72 percent of ICU beds, 64 percent of isolation beds, 72 percent of ward beds, and 59 percent of ventilators, were in use.
Health officials a day earlier said they had detected 516 more of the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19. Of the total 1,789 known cases of the Delta variant, 38 are still active.
Of the new Delta variant cases, 473 were local cases, while 31 were returning Filipinos from abroad. Twelve were still being verified.
Six of the newly detected Delta cases remain active, five cases have died, 505 cases have been tagged as recovered, while the remaining are being validated by the regional and local health offices, the DOH said.
Over the weekend, the DOH said nearly half of hospitals in the National Capital Region are at high risk as the hospital occupancy rate remains between 71 and 85 percent.
The government’s hospital referral hotline is getting at least 500 calls every day, with most callers inquiring about what to do if they have COVID-19 but are asymptomatic, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire had said.
“We are meeting with local governments so that they will be establishing their triaging and navigation systems,” she said. “The local government’s hotlines must be working so the calls won’t always end up at the One Hospital Command.”
He urged people to call their local governments first to identify which facilities they could go to.
The DOH has been urging the public to get vaccinated if they are already eligible for the COVID-19 jabs to avoid severe or critical cases that may need hospitalization.
As of Aug. 25, the Philippines has fully vaccinated 13.37 million people, which is 18.87 percent of the target number of fully inoculated individuals to attain herd immunity against the disease.
The independent OCTA Research Group said COVID-19 cases in Metro Manila are expected to decline by the middle of September, as there is a three- to four-week lag between the time a lockdown is imposed and when a decline can be observed.
In other developments:
* The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) said the intensive care units of hospitals in the region have reached 81 percent occupancy. The region has 626 active infections or 6.1 percent out of a total 10,143 COVID-19 cases, said Dr. Amirel Usman, head of BARMM’s Ministry of Health. It has recorded 9,313 recoveries and 393 deaths, he added.
* The Philippine Red Cross (PRC) reported that it has breached the 4-million mark in its reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) swab and saliva testing and has vaccinated 156,709 nationwide in its Bakuna Centers and buses nationwide as of Aug. 29.
