COVID-19 daily cases up a day before NCR, 4 provinces shift to GCQ

August 18, 2020

The  Department of Health (DOH) on Tuesday reported 4,836 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, a day before the National Capital Region and four provinces shift to general community quarantine (GCQ) after two weeks of being in modified enhanced community quarantine.

The total number of COVID-19 cases are now 169,213, of which 53, 665 are active.  From the active cases, mild ones account for 91.5 percent, followed by asymptomatic with 6.2 percent, critical 1.3 percent and severe 0.9 percent.

The National Capital Region (NCR) accounted for 2,959 of the new cases. This was followed by Laguna 321, Cavite 220, Rizal 185, and Bulacan 145. These four areas, along with the NCR, will be under general community starting August 18.

Seven deaths from COVID-19 were reported, bringing the total to 2,687 fatalities.

There were 182 persons who survived COVID-19, raising total recoveries to 112, 861.

In a television interview, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said an eased lockdown which starts Wednesday will most likely result in more transmission of the virus.

"Whenever we ease out or deescalate these restrictions we have, we expect that there will be higher cases as what happened to us when we deescalated to GCQ in the past," said Vergeire.

"We are setting safeguards so that we won't have these rise in cases again. Hopefully, these strategies will bear fruit and we will not have these high cases in the next couple of weeks," she said.

Vergeire said the DOH is calling on people to be ''responsible enough to comply with minimum health standards.'' DMS