Ever since the implementation of community quarantines across the Philippines back in March, Filipinos have become somewhat used to the daily routine of the Department of Health (DOH) in tracking the relevant figures of infection by the novel coronavirus or COVID-19. Day by day the number of confirmed cases, plus the count of patients who either recovered or died, was updated quite without fail by Health Officials on social media and data shared with major news programs on all media networks. The schedule has been so ingrained in the country’s daily routine that a missed day in COVID case updates this Sunday caught significant attention.
CNN Philippines reports that July 12 was the first day in quite a long time that the Department of Health did not announce its daily litany of the latest number of people in the country that has come down with COVID-19. A statement by the DOH early this Monday, July 13, explained that they missed their average reporting time the day before due to not being able to validate the new figures for Sunday in time to make a finalized report in the afternoon. They attributed this to receiving a large amount of patients’ data.
The DOH announcement noted that there was trouble with harmonizing data from both the NCR and other regions of the Philippines on account of the largest number of COVID reports yet received, such that the department could not make a valid count of updated confirmed cases, recoveries and deaths. Worryingly, this is an indicator that the upsurge of cases, which has been near-consistently hitting four-digit numbers in the past few days, has only exploded exponentially even as quarantine restrictions across the nation have been relaxed. To make up for this schedule slip, a report on COVID Data for Sunday, July 12, was given early today.
Filipinos had every right to be worried. Just has the new confirmed COVID case daily threshold has reach the thousands, so has the daily death toll now broken the two-digits to reach the hundreds levels for the first time. As of July 12 there have been 2,124 new positive cases adding to 56,259 total infections. The death tally was a shocking 162, though only 18 of these were confirmed to have died of COVID last week, with the rest being late reports of those who passed from May to June.
On the other hand, recoveries also reached a new high with 2,009 as of Sunday, totaling 16,046 of those who have gotten better. As of late, only 38,679 out of the 56,259 total COVID cases are still active, and 92.2% of the actives have been lucky with mild, flu-like symptoms. A report for Monday, July 13, is expected to be delivered later, around 4 PM.
Image courtesy of MSN
Morgan Magazine 