PH among top 20 countries with most COVID-19 cases
Over 200 days since the Philippines confirmed its first local case of COVID-19 in March, the country is now 20th in the world with most cases of COVID-19 cases, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. The country also has the highest COVID-19 cases in Southeast Asia since August.
As of this writing, the Philippines has more than 316,000 cumulative cases trailing behind Italy, one of the earliest COVID-19 hotspots, with almost 320,000; and Turkey with almost 322,000. The Philippines has also recorded 2,415 new cases, a total of 5,616 deaths and 254,617 recoveries.
The United States (7.3 million), India (6.4 million) and Brazil (4.8 million) remain to be the countries with most number of cases worldwide.
In a STAR report, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosa Vergiere noted that the country’s COVID-19 testing has seen a “big improvement,” having screened about 3.5 million individuals. This, according to Vergiere, could be one of the reasons why the Philippines is reporting a higher number of COVID-19 cases.
Metro Manila, which remains under general community quarantine until October 31, continues to have the highest total number of COVID-19 cases nationwide at almost 166,000.
The University of the Philippines-OCTA Research team, an independent and interdisciplinary research group composed primarily of UP faculty members and alumni, projects the COVID-19 cases in the country to reach 380,000 to 410,000 by the end of October.
Despite the downward trend of coronavirus cases in the country, officials of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases appealed to the public not to be complacent, as they would like the economy to continue to move forward.
Currently, there are more that 34 million global cases of COVID-19 worldwide, with over one million deaths and almost 24 million recoveries.
Banner photo by Michael Varcas