THE Department of Health (DOH) on Tuesday, February 23, 2021, reported less than 1,500 new coronavirus infections for the first time in almost one week.
In its case bulletin issued at 4 p.m. Tuesday, DOH confirmed 1,414 new cases, bringing the total case count to 564,865,
Active cases in hospitals and isolation facilities went up to 29,817, or 5.3 percent of the total.
Mortalities and recoveries remained low, with DOH reporting additional 16 deaths and 72 recoveries.
The death toll from coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) increased to 12,107, but the case fatality rate (CFR) declined to 2.14 percent..
The positivity rate in a 24-hour period ending noon of February 22 was still high at 6.2 percent as 1,267 out of 20,556 individuals tested were found positive for Sars-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.
Cebu City continued to post the highest number of new cases in the last 14 days as of February 22, followed by Cebu Province.
The DOH nationwide Covid-19 tracker showed that Cebu City had 2,508 confirmed cases in the period under review while Cebu Province had 1,129, less than 100 higher than Quezon City’s 1,045.
Other cities with a high number of new cases for the period are Manila with 909 and Davao City with 665,
Among the regions, the DOH tracker showed that the National Capital Region (NCR) still had the highest number of new cases at 5,877 for the same period.
Central Visayas followed closely with 4,887 new cases while Calabarzon, the biggest region in the country in terms of population size, was third with 1,985 new infections.
Other regions with a high number of new cases are Central Luzon (1,271) and Cordillera (1,168), site of a cluster of B.1.1.7 variant cases. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)