THE Department of Health (DOH) on Sunday, February 21, 2021, reported 1,888 new cases of infection, increasing the total case count in the country to 561,169.

The new cases also brought the total in the recent seven days from February 15 to 21 to 11,993, a 1.07 percent increase from the previous seven-day count of 11,866.

In its case bulletin issued at 4 p.m. Sunday, DOH also posted 20 additional mortalities, bringing the death toll from coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) to 12,088.

The case fatality rate declined to 2.15 percent after a spike of 2.16 percent on Saturday, owing to the high number of deaths reported in a single day.

There was a “mass recovery” of 9,737 on Sunday, an 11.2 percent decline from the previous Sunday’s 10,967 recoveries.

A “mass recovery” is reported every Sunday based on the DOH’s time-based recovery strategy, which declares patients who have had no symptoms in the last 14 consecutive days as recoveries.

The “mass recovery” reduced the number of active cases to 26,188, which comprised 4.7 percent of the total case count.

The positivity rate remained elevated at 6.3 percent over the 24-hour period ending noon of February 20, as 1,826 out of 29,084 samples tested positive for Sars-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19.

Highest new cases

For about a month now, Cebu City remained at the top of the list in terms of new cases of infection nationwide. As of February 20, DOH listed 2,426 new cases in the last 14 days by date of onset of illness.

Cebu Province still came in second, with 1,069 new cases in the last two weeks.

Other cities with a high number of new cases were Quezon City with 998, Manila with 802 and Davao City with 665.

The risk of falling ill with Covid-19 is also highest in Cebu City, which has the smallest population among these cities. For the period under review, more than 240 per 100,000 population in Cebu City contracted the disease.

Among the regions, the National Capital Region (NCR) continued to post the highest number of new cases, with 5,295 infections in the last 14 days, according to the DOH tracker.

It was followed by Central Visayas, which had 4,635 new infections in the same period.

The risk of contracting the disease is, however, higher in Central Visayas, where about 60 people per 100,000 population got infected compared to less than 40 sick people per 100,000 population in the NCR.

Other regions with the highest new cases in the same period were Calabarzon with 1,931, Central Luzon with 1,259 and Davao Region with 1,160.

Globally, around 3.0 million more were infected in the past week, increasing the total to 111 million. More than 2.46 million had died as of 2 p.m. Sunday, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

Although the United States saw a slowdown in cases, it remained at the top of the list with over 28 million infections, about a million more in the past week.

The Philippines remained in the 31st slot in terms of cumulative cases as of 2 p.m. Sunday.

Meanwhile, over 200 million doses of vaccines against Covid-19 have been administered worldwide and more than 35.2 million people have been fully vaccinated, according to Johns Hopkins’ vaccination tracker. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)