By NewsDesk  @infectiousdiseasenews

The Philippines Department of Health (DOH) reported an additional 1874 COVID-19 cases Wednesday, bringing the country’s outbreak total to 85,486.

Provinces reporting the most new cases during this 24 hour period include the National Capital Region (NCR) with 728, followed by Cebu (325) and Laguna (130).

Image/CDC

The number of deaths now stand at 1962.

The good news, health officials say is despite the rise in COVID-19 cases, the country’s case fatality rate (CFR) shows a decreasing trend. Both numbers also indicate that the death rate might be reaching a point of stability.

“We will see improvement. In recent months, CFR has been around 6% and it has dropped slightly to 2%. We see two factors here — the number of people dying is decreasing and our detection is increasing”, epidemiologist Dr. DJ Darwin Bandoy said.

“With a clear understanding of the data, we give all the ability to be part of the solution and guide the masses and all sectors to act and decide accordingly to their agency and household, so as to have they have a stronger chance of fighting COVID-19,” Health OIC-Undersecretary Maria Rosario Singh-Vergeire explained .

“There are various reasons for the increase in the number of cases, first there is community transmission when the minimum health standards are not met. That is also when the number of cases caused by community transmission is more detectable because our testing capacity has increased, it is already around 26,000 tests per day because many new testing centers have also opened up”, Bandoy noted.

Bandoy concluded, “Decrease in CFR is attributed to overall improvement in healthcare system particularly patient management.​ Stabilizing the number of deaths is associated with improving the quality of healthcare. We are already more familiar than in previous months, we already know more and there are treatments and protocols have improved”.