853 new COVID-19 cases lowest this year; active tally at 50K

The Philippines on Friday logged another record daily tally this year with 853 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the nationwide caseload to 3,665,747.

The previous lowest count recorded was 866 on Wednesday, March 2.

According to the Department of Health's (DOH) latest bulletin, 50,230 active infections were logged, of which 450 are asymptomatic, 45,300 are mild, 2,773 are moderate, 1,411 are severe, and 296 are critical.

The DOH said of the 853 reported cases on Friday, 784 or 92% occurred within the recent 14 days from February 19 to March 4, 2022.

The top regions with cases in the recent two weeks were the National Capital Region (NCR) with 170 or 22%, followed by Region 4-A with 128 or 16% and Region 7 with 94 or 12%.

Total recoveries climbed to 3,558,747 with 1,062 new individuals recovered from the viral disease.

The Health department reported 232 new fatalities, pushing the death tally to 56,770.

Meanwhile, the country’s COVID-19 positivity rate was at 4.3%, which is within than the World Health Organization's requirement target of less than 5% positivity rate. The total conducted COVID-19 tests were at 25,496.

The DOH said all laboratories were operational since March 2, while there were two laboratories that failed to submit data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System.

It said 11 duplicates were removed from the total case count. Of these, five are recoveries.

Meanwhile, at least 219 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.

Data also showed that 25% of 3,700 intensive care unit (ICU) beds for COVID-19 patients nationwide are in use.

At least 14% of the 14,000 ward beds in the country were utilized, while 24% of the 3,900 ward beds in the NCR were in use.—LDF, GMA News