Daily death toll hits all-time high at 401

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines logged its all-time high number of COVID-19 deaths yesterday at 401, with the surge in cases driving the number of fatalities to 1,097 in less than a week.

The Department of Health (DOH)’s daily tally for April 9 listed 401 new COVID-19 deaths, bringing to 14,520 the pandemic’s death toll nationwide.

Over the last six days, 1,097 COVID-19 patients succumbed to the infection, including the two fatalities logged on April 4; the 10 on April 5; 382 on April 6; 242 on April 7 and 60 on April 8.

But Rontgene Solante, head of the Fellowship Program in Adult Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine at the San Lazaro Hospital, said this increased mortality figure does not mean that COVID-19 is more virulent now.

Solante explained that the deaths reflect how there are more COVID-19 cases now and that majority of them are senior citizens, who are the most vulnerable of the sectors.

“The virus is always virulent especially for 60 years old and above. The increase in death will always follow when you have more 60 years old and above admitted with comorbidities,” he said.

The bulletin showed that many of the reported fatalities was a result of the DOH’s revalidation efforts.

It stated that “213 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.”

Data show there were 12,225 new cases yesterday, the third biggest daily tally after 15,310 cases and 12,576 cases last April 2 and 3, respectively.

Overall, there are now 840,554 COVID-19 cases with 178,351 of them being active cases, representing 21.2 percent of the total.

The DOH said there were 10 laboratories unable to submit their data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System.