The number of new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases in the Philippines leaped to 16,634 after 1,046 infections, a new record high in a day.
The Department of Health (DOH) on Friday said 46 of the new patients are “fresh” cases while 1,000 are “late” cases.
The DOH explained that “fresh cases” are test results released within the last 3 days, while “late cases” are test results released more than 4 days ago.
This is the first time since March that the health department used the terms to distinguish new cases from backlog cases.
Recoveries, on the other hand, increased to 3,720 with 122 more patients who survived the COVID-19 infection.
The DOH’s daily bulletin also posted 21 new deaths, bringing the total number of fatalities to 942.
Meanwhile, the DOH earlier confirmed that the huge spike of infections this week is caused by the agency’s increased capacity to validate cases after hiring more encoders. (RJ Espartinez)