The Department of Health (DOH) on Wednesday reported 1,594 new coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) infections, raising the overall tally to 72,269.
The DOH said the additional cases reported were based on the total tests done by 78 out of 89 operational laboratories.
Majority of the newly announced cases are from the National Capital Region (971), Cebu (252), Zamboanga del Sur (53), Negros Occidental (35) and Rizal (26).
It also reported 342 new recoveries and six deaths.
These figures bring the total number of recoveries to 23,623 and the total number of deaths to 1,843.
“Of the six deaths, five or 83 percent in July and one or 17 percent in June. Deaths were from NCR which was two or 33 percent, Region 6 which is two or 33 percent, Region 7 which is one or 17 percent, and BARMM which is one or 17 percent. Eighty-nine duplicates were removed from total case count,” the DOH said.
It added the total cases reported may be subject to change as these numbers undergo constant cleaning and validation.
The DOH also noted that there are 46,803 active cases and about 90.1 percent of them are mild, 9.0 percent are asymptomatic, 0.5 percent are severe, and 0.4 percent are critical.
In a Covid-19 presser, DOH Public Health Service Director Beverly Ho said the latest reproductive number as of June 24 is 1.58.
“This went up compared to the reported 1.23 last week as of June 22. The reproductive number shows how many are infected by each Covid-19 case, and if our reproduction rate is 1.58, this means every case can infect one to two persons, so, our target number is below one,” Ho added.
As of Tuesday, a total of 1,131,800 individual tests were performed by the 68 licensed RT-PCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) laboratories and 23 licensed GeneXpert laboratories nationwide.
The DOH also has 15,734 total bed capacity dedicated to patients with Covid-19.
Occupied are about 51.7 percent of 1,367 intensive care unit beds; 50.9 percent of 10,653 isolation beds; and 56.2 percent of 3,714 ward beds.
There are 1,951 total ventilators for Covid-19 patients with about 29.1 percent in use. (PNA)
