THE Department of Health (DOH) on Monday, February 21, 2022, reported below 1,500 fresh cases of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in the Philippines.

In its 4 p.m. Monday case bulletin, the DOH logged 1,427 new cases of Covid-19, bringing the country's caseload to 3,653,526.

The health department said of the 1,427 reported cases Monday, 1,389 occurred from February 8 to 21.

The top regions with cases in the recent two weeks were the National Capital Region with 318 cases or 23 percent, Calabarzon with 168 cases or 12 percent and Western Visayas with 159 cases or 11 percent.

The Philippines' positivity rate stood at 7.5 percent from the 25,000 tested samples on February 19.

Active cases nationwide also decreased to 58,657 or 1.6 percent of the total cases.

Of the active cases, 92.2 percent were mild and asymptomatic, or 53,326 and 760 cases, respectively. A total of 2,845 were moderate, 1,422 were severe, and 304 were critical active cases.

The country's death toll also increased to 55,763, with 79 mortalities reported Monday.

The fatality rate stood at 1.53 percent.

Of the 79 deaths, 66 occurred in February 2022 (84 percent), eight in January 2022 (10 percent), four in October 2021 (five percent) and one in September 2021 (one percent), the DOH said.

The DOH said the data was only reported on Monday due to late encoding of death information to COVIDKaya.

The health agency also reported 3,269 recoveries, bringing the total survivors to 3,539,106 or a recovery rate of 96.9 percent.

The DOH said 104 duplicates were also removed from the total case count. Of these, 98 were recoveries. A total of 52 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were also reclassified as deaths after final validation.

For the health utilization rate, 30 percent of intensive care unit beds, 24 percent of isolation beds, 20 percent of ward beds and 16 percent of ventilators were utilized.