MANILA, Philippines (Update 1, 5:19 p.m.) — The Philippines recorded 198 more novel coronavirus cases and 10 additional deaths in the past 24 hours, the Department of Health said Monday.
The country now has total confirmed infections of 7,777, with 511 fatalities.
For the second day in a row, the DOH reported 70 new recoveries. This pushed to 932 the total number of patients who have survived the severe respiratory disease.
Coronavirus cases remain largely concentrated in Metro Manila, with the capital region accounting to around 68% of the nation’s confirmed infections.
Meanwhile, there are 1,650 cases in the rest of Luzon, 579 cases in Visayas and 177 cases in Mindanao. Some 39 cases are still being validated.
To date, 80,015 people in the country have been tested since late January.
Last week, President Rodrigo Duterte extended the lockdown imposed over Metro Manila and other parts of the country by two weeks to further quell the spread of the virus.
The number of virus infections worldwide has approached three million since the pathogen surfaced in China late last year. The global coronavirus death toll, meanwhile, reached 206,544.
The United Nations launched a global push for a vaccine to defeat the coronavirus pandemic
“A world free of COVID-19 requires the most massive public health effort in history,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. — with report from Agence France-Presse
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