(Eagle News) – At least 11,021 more COVID-19 cases were reported by the Department of Health on Saturday, Aug. 7, higher than Friday’s count of 10,623 new cases. This makes it a new record for highest single-day number of new virus infections since the April 2021 surge.
This is the second straight day that the new virus cases were more than 10,000 since the COVID surge in April.
Active COVID cases also rose to 76,063 or 4.6 percent of the total confirmed cases that now reached 1,649,341
There were also a high number of recoveries at 9,194 pushing the total COVID recoveries to 1,544,443.
New deaths were 162. This is lower than the previous day’s additional fatalities of 247. The total COVID-19 deaths reached 28,835 or 1.75 percent of the total virus cases as of Saturday.
-Rising COVID-19 positivity rate-
The positivity rate also rose to 19.1 percent, the highest so far in over three months.
Since the Delta variant was confirmed to have entered the country, the positivity rate has been slowly increasing. The positivity rate is the percentage of persons testing positive for COVID-19 as against the total of those who took the COVID tests.
This is important as it gives an indication of the level of COVID transmission in the population.
“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,” according to the Johns Hopkins University.
On Friday, Aug. 6, the positivity rate was at 18.4 percent; on Thursday, Aug. 5, it was at 17.3 percent; and on Wednesday, Aug. 4, it was at 16.4 percent.
(Eagle News Service)