The Health Ministry says 1,291 new COVID-19 cases were diagnosed yesterday and another 917 have been confirmed thus far today.
The number of serious patients leaps from 321 this morning to 349, underscoring the rise in infections. Of them, 102 are on ventilators.
The total number of cases since the start of the pandemic rises to 356,823, of which 16,801 are active cases.
The death toll grows by 13 since this morning and reaches 2,996, just short of the 3,000 mark.
The ministry says 2.9 percent of the 44,853 tests conducted yesterday came back positive. Non-final data for today says 3.8% of 24,073 tests have been positive.
Testing rates tend to drop on weekends (last week there were around 70,000 daily tests), with the positivity rate temporarily rising (last week the rate was around 2.5%).
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From the Liveblog of
Sunday, December 13, 2020
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