FOR the sixth consecutive day, new coronavirus infections in the Philippines exceeded 2,000 a day, pushing the cumulative case count past 580,000 on Tuesday, March 2, 2021.

In its case bulletin issued at 4 p.m. Tuesday, the Department of Health (DOH) reported 2,067 new infections.

The total case count in the country increased to 580,442, including 33,610 active cases in hospitals and isolation facilities.

There were 47 additional mortalities, raising the death toll from coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) to 12,369. The case fatality rate remained at 2.13 percent.

There were 144 additional recoveries, bringing the total to 534,463, or 92.1 percent of the infections.

Out of the 20,491 samples tested for Sars-CoV-2, 1,410 or 6.9 percent were found positive.

Cebu City continued to post the highest number of new cases in the last 14 days as of March 1, based on the DOH national Covid-19 tracker.

The city posted 2,589 new cases in the last two weeks by date of onset of illness.

Cebu Province was still in the fourth spot, with 1,285 cases for the same period.

Three cities in Metro Manila were in the top five. Quezon City remained in the second spot with 1,411, followed by Pasay City with 1,350 and Manila, which was fifth, had 1,277 cases.

Among the regions. Metro Manila or the National Capital Region still had the highest number of new cases at 8,592.

It was still followed by Central Visayas (5,465), Calabarzon (2,286), Central Luzon (1,491) and Cordillera (1,126).

Cases with highly transmissible variants of Sars-CoV-2 have been detected in the NCR and Cordillera, while cases with mutations of interest were found in Central Visayas. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)