MANILA - The Philippines' COVID-19 cases rose by more than half in the last 7 days, while the number of patients with serious conditions also increased, the Department of Health said Monday.

From June 20 to 26, the country recorded 4,634 new COVID-19 cases or an average of 662 per day, the DOH said in its latest bulletin. The agency said this was 53 percent higher than the 3,051 infections logged from June 13 to 19.

Out of the latest weekly tally of infections, 14 were severe and critical.

As of Sunday, a total of 591 or 10.7 percent of COVID-19 patients in hospitals were in severe and critical condition. The figure is higher than the previous week's 554 severe and critical patients, who comprised 10.2 percent of COVID-19 hospital admissions at the time.

Some 391 or 14.9 percent of 2,628 intensive care unit (ICU) beds for COVID-19 patients were occupied as of Sunday, according to the DOH.

During the past week, the DOH said it verified 51 COVID-related fatalities, citing late encoding of death information. The deaths occurred in the following months:

• 2 occurred in February 2022
• 4 in January 2022
• 3 in November 2021
• 1 in October 2021
• 8 in September 2021
• 8 in August 2021
• 3 in July 2021
• 5 in June 2021
• 3 in May 2021
• 8 in April 2021
• 5 in March 2021
• 1 in February 2021

Some 70 million people have been fully vaccinated against the respiratory disease, of whom 14.9 million have received their booster shots.

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