The Department of Health (DOH) reported over 7,000 new coronavirus cases and more than 15,000 recoveries on Sunday.

In its latest bulletin, DOH said there were 7,757 new cases, bringing the total COVID-19 cases in the country to 663,794.

The Health department also recorded 15,288 new recoveries which brought the total number of recovered patients to 577,754 while 39 patients died due to the virus bringing the total to 12,968.

DOH said there were 73,072 active COVID-19 cases in the country.

Of the active cases, 95.0 percent were mild, 2.3 percent were asymptomatic, 1.0 percent were critical, 1.1 percent were severe, and 0.58 percent were moderate.

As to healthcare facilities, the DOH said there were still avilable 53 percent ICU beds, 39 percent isolation beds, 38 percent ward beds, and 31 percent ventilators.

In a radio interview, Jomar Rabajante of the UP Pandemic Response Team said if based on the latest graph of COVID-19 cases, what is happening now can be considered as a second wave.

“If we look on our graph, there is a second peak that is happening. Around August (last year) we reached six to seven thousand cases then yesterday (Saturday) we reached eight thousand, so looking at the visual, it looks like a second wave,” Rabajante said.

Rabajante also said that the country can reach up to 15,000 cases per day as the number of people infected has doubled or even tripled.

“This might take long, April or May, depending on the interventions of the government,” he said.

“Our increase right now is not linear, it is really an exponential (increase),” he said. Ella Dionisio/DMS