THE Department of Health (DOH) on Sunday, January 31, 2021, reported over 2,000 new cases of coronavirus infection for the second day.
The 2,103 new infections brought the cumulative case count to 525,618, a year after DOH confirmed the first case in the Philippines on January 30, 2020.
For the month of January 2021 alone, new cases reached 51,554, around 21 percent higher than the 42,434 cases in December 2020 and slightly higher than the 50,901 cases in November 2020, but lower than the 69,035 in October.
There were 80 additional mortalities on Sunday, pushing the death toll from coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) in the Philippines to 10,749 as of January 31.
The case fatality rate further increased to 2.05 percent.
The DOH, meanwhile, reported a “mass recovery” of 11,653, increasing the total to 487,551 and reducing the active cases to 27,318.
Under the DOH time-based recovery scheme, coronavirus-positive individuals without symptoms for at least 14 consecutive days are deemed to have recovered from infection.
Globally, infections have reached nearly 102.6 million as of 3 p.m. Sunday, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Of this number, 2.22 million had died.
The United States continued to post the highest number of cases at 26.07 million, with 439,5309 deaths, followed by India with 10.74 million cases including 154,274 deaths, and Brazil with 9.17 million cases including 223,945 deaths.
The Philippines remained at 32nd spot in terms of total caseload.
Cases of infection in the Philippines peaked in August, with DOH reporting an average of 4,111 a day. The all-time high was 6,958 cases on August 10, 2020.
In Cebu City, the number of barangays with no reported coronavirus infections for the past 14 days is down to 18 from 28 as of end-2020. The 62 other barangays recorded active cases.
Barangay Buot reported its very first case since the pandemic struck the city in March 2020, which leaves only three barangays that never recorded infections.
As of Saturday, the Emergency Operations Center data showed that Cebu City had 1,329 active cases compared to the 86 on Dec. 30. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines with JJL)