(Eagle News) – The Philippines recorded 13,177 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, Aug. 13, the second highest number of virus cases in the country in a single day.

Because of this, the active COVID-19 cases in the country reached 96,395, while the total confirmed virus cases reached 1,713,302.

New recoveries for Friday were 4,322 while those who died were 299. This death toll is is one of the highest recorded in a single day this year.

Total COVID fatalities have now reached 29,838, or 1.74 percent of total COVID cases

Total recoveries, on the other hand, reached 1,587,069, or 92.6 percent of total COVID cases.

The percentage of active cases as of Friday is at 5.6 percent. On Thursday, the percentage of active COVID cases was only 5.2 percent.

The positivity rate on Friday was at a high of 23.6 percent. On Thursday, it was at 22.5 percent.

Johns Hopkins University says “a higher percent positive suggests higher transmission and that there are likely more people with coronavirus in the community who haven’t been tested yet.”

“The percent positive is a critical measure because it gives us an indication how widespread infection is in the area where the testing is occurring—and whether levels of testing are keeping up with levels of disease transmission,” it said.

The highest number of COVID-19 cases reported by the DOH was on April 2 this year, when the new virus cases recorded were 15,310. But this number included 3,709 case backlogs then due to COVID Kaya technical difficulties. COVID Kaya is the digital platform for COVID-19 management in the Philippines.

(Eagle News Service)