One year after the government placed Metro Manila under quarantine, new COVID-19 cases continue to surge.

On Monday, March 15, the Department of Health reported a total of 5,404 new COVID-19 infections pushing the number of active cases to 53,479.

The total number of confirmed cases in the country is now at 626,893, with 560,577 of them tagged as recoveries.

The country also recorded 8 new deaths. The death toll is now at 12,387.

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The new cases is the new highest for the year 2021 and higher than the infections recorded last August 26, 2020.

92.4 percent of active cases only experienced mild symptoms, while 4.0 percent were asymptomatic. The data also showed that 1.4 percent of the patients currently have severe symptoms while another 1.4 percent are in critical condition.

Several Metro Manila hospitals are at the brink of collapsing as their intensive care units continue to be filled with COVID-19 patients.

As of March 13, intensive care units of the Philippine General Hospital, the San Lazaro Hospital, the Philippine Lung Center, and the East Avenue Medical Center were operating at full capacity, the frontliners said.

Bed allocations for PGH and San Lazaro hospitals are 70% to 60% occupied respectively.

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The PGH announced earlier this week that an online appointment is necessary before patients are allowed to have a face-to-face consultation with their physicians.

“Hospitals are getting full with COVID-19 cases. Please protect yourself and your family,” PGH spokesperson Dr. Jonas del Rosario said.

Dr. Dennis Ordoña, head of COVID department of the East Avenue Medical Center said that their ICU is now full following the increasing trend of COVID-19 cases.

“So what is happening now is we are allocating more beds for COVID patients which were previously allocated for non-COVID patients,” Dr. Ordoña added. (TDT)