Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 1) – The Department of Health (DOH) on Tuesday announced another 1,067 COVID-19 cases nationwide and no new deaths.
This is the first time since July 9, 2020 that there were zero new fatalities logged, apart from the days that the government reported technical issues.
According to the DOH, the death toll is still at 56,451.
The total number of infections, meanwhile, has reached 3,663,059, of which 1.4% or 51,592 are active cases.
However, the update showed nine testing laboratories failed to submit results on time. These facilities accounted for 1.4% of samples tested and 1.4% of positive cases, based on official data over the past two weeks.
The department also said 1,652 more patients recovered, raising the total number of survivors to 3,555,016.
It further detailed that of the freshly confirmed cases, 652 (or 61%) were detected within the last 14 days, while the rest were late reports. The top contributing regions are Metro Manila with 144 more infections (or 22%); Calabarzon with 92 (or 14%); and Central Luzon with 72 (or 11%).
A breakdown of the country’s active cases, on the other hand, showed 489 are asymptomatic; 46,609 are mild; 2,779 are moderate; 1,417 are severe; and 298 are critical.
After final validation, the department noted it removed five duplicate entries from the total case count.
Positivity rate less than 5%
The bulletin also showed the positivity rate, or the percentage of infected people out of all tested, dropped to 4.3%, as Metro Manila and several other areas in the country shifted to the lowest Alert Level 1.
The last time the figure was below 5% was on Dec. 29 last year. The World Health Organization recommends a positivity rate of less than 5% to claim that viral transmission has been controlled.
However, the DOH also indicated that the 4.3% was based on the 18,766 coronavirus tests reported on Feb. 27. This number is lower than in the past few days when at least 22,000 tests were conducted daily.
The DOH noted that laboratory outputs from Sundays are traditionally the lowest.
