PH logs new record-low COVID-19 cases this year at 951

MANILA, Philippines — The country logged 951 new COVID-19 infections on Monday, the lowest the country recorded this year, along with 1,717 new recoveries, said the Department of Health (DOH).

This is the first time the country recorded less than 1,000 daily infections in 2022, making this the lowest since Dec. 29 of last year — where 889 cases were registered.

Based on the DOH’s case bulletin, 94 percent or 895 of these new infections were logged within the last 14 days, with NCR listed as the top region posting the highest number of new cases at 231 new cases (26 percent) in the recent two weeks.

The DOH also posted a 5.0 percent positivity rate in the 22,407 tests conducted nationwide, barely within the World Health Organization’s threshold indicating controlled transmission of the SARS-CoV-2, which is also 5 percent.

It should be noted, however, that tests conducted on average in February are generally much lower compared to the number of tests conducted in January, or during the height of the COVID-19 surge caused by the Omicron variant of concern.

READ: Tests conducted for COVID-19 lower in February

The new recoveries, on the other hand, further reduced active infections to 52,179, of which 91.4 percent currently suffer mild or asymptomatic cases; specifically, 47,157 individuals suffer mild cases, 528 are asymptomatic, 2,779 moderate, 1,417 severe, and 298 critical.

The DOH also said that it added the deaths of 50 people — 23 of which occurred in the month of February, the rest in previous months — to the total COVID-19 death count.

With this, total confirmed infections are now at 3,661,997, while recoveries sit at 3,553,367 and death toll at 56,451.

The health agency likewise said that 3 duplicates were removed from the total case count, one of which was a recovery.

Moreover, the DOH said that 36 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.

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