PH records lowest single-day tally of Covid-19 cases this year

MANILA – The Department of Health (DOH) on Wednesday logged 866 new cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), the lowest single-day tally so far for this year.

The figure is higher than the 421 infections reported on Dec. 28, 2021 — the last time the country saw the lowest three-digit daily new cases.

It pushed the overall tally of confirmed infections to 3,663,920.

The active cases went down 50,827 after 1,622 new recoveries were logged.

About 474 of the active cases are asymptomatic, 45,862 are mild, 2,776 are moderate, 1,417 are severe and 298 are critical.

Meantime, the total recovered cases increased to 3,556,589.

“Of the 866 reported cases today, 757 (87 percent) occurred within the recent 14 days, February 17 to March 2, 2022,” the DOH reported.

The regions with the most cases in the recent two weeks were the National Capital Region with 176 or 23 percent, Calabarzon with 119 or 16 percent, and Central Visayas with 82 or 11 percent.

The death toll has reached 56,504 with 53 new deaths, representing 1.54 percent of overall cases.

“Of the 53 deaths, 23 occurred in February 2022 (43 percent), 2 in January 2022 (4 percent), 1 in December 2021 (2 percent), 2 in November 2021 (4 percent), 10 in October 2021 (19 percent), 5 in September 2021 (9 percent), 2 in August 2021 (4 percent), 1 in July 2021 (2 percent), 2 in June 2021 (4 percent), 1 in March 2021 (2 percent), 1 in February 2021 (2 percent), 1 in November 2020 (2 percent), 1 in July 2020 (2 percent), and 1 in March 2020 (2 percent) due to the late encoding of death information to COVIDKaya,” the DOH said.

COVIDKaya is a digital application used by health care workers to collect and share data about Covid-19 cases.

According to the February 28 data, about 4.7 percent of 23,738 who were tested turned out positive for coronavirus.

About five duplicates were removed from the total case count as three were recoveries.

Meanwhile, 46 cases previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after validation.

To date, 25 percent of 3,700 intensive care unit (ICU) beds, 23 percent of 20,400 isolation beds, 14 percent of 14,000 ward beds, and 13 percent of 3,100 ventilators are used by patients with Covid-19 nationwide.

In the NCR, 24 percent of 1,300 ICU beds, 24 percent of 4,600 isolation beds, 22 percent of 3,900 ward beds, and 15 percent of 1,000 ventilators dedicated to patients with Covid-19 are in use.