Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, February 21) — The country on Monday recorded 1,427 new COVID-19 infections, pushing the nationwide count to 3,653,526, the Department of Health’s latest bulletin showed.
It is the lowest daily tally of new cases since Dec. 29 last year, when 889 were reported infected with COVID-19. It is also the third straight day that fresh cases were below 2,000.
Of the total count, 58,657 are active or currently ill patients. Among them are 53,326 with mild symptoms; 2,845 experiencing moderate symptoms; 1,422 with severe symptoms; 760 with no symptoms; and 304 who are in critical condition.
The DOH also reported that 79 more patients died, raising the death toll to 55,763. There were also 3,269 new COVID-19 survivors, bringing the recovery count to 3,539,106.
The DOH said all laboratories were operational on Feb. 19. However, five laboratories failed to submit their data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System. Based on data in the last 14 days, the non-reporting laboratories contribute, on average, 0.1% of samples tested and 0.3% of positive cases.
Of the new cases reported, 1,389 occurred within the past 14 days from Feb. 8 to Feb. 21. The regions with the most number of cases during that period were the National Capital Region with 318 cases, Calabarzon with 168 cases, and Western Visayas with 159 cases.
Meanwhile, the positivity rate, or percentage of tested people with positive results, stood at 7.5% based on 25,000 tests reported on Feb. 19. This is so far the lowest positivity rate recorded this year.
Of the new deaths reported, 66 occurred this month, eight in January, four in October 2021, and one in September 2021. The late reporting was due to the delayed encoding of information to the COVIDKaya data storage system, the DOH explained.
The department also said that 104 duplicates were removed from the total case count. Of these, 98 are recoveries.
It added that 52 cases previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.
