FOR the third time in the last seven days, new coronavirus infections exceeded 2,000 on Thursday, February 25, 2021, as Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Francisco Duque III said the situation has stabilized.
In its case bulletin issued at 4 p.m. Thursday, DOH reported 2,269 new cases, increasing the number of active cases to 32,437 and the total caseload in the Philippines to 568,680.
It was the third time for new cases to breach 2,000 in a single day in the last seven days from February 19 to 25. DOH reported 2,240 cases on February 20 and 2,288 on February 22.
The DOH case bulletin also showed 72 additional mortalities, which brought the death toll from coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) to 12,201 and caused the case fatality rate to swing back to 2.15 percent.
There were 738 more recoveries, pushing the total to 524,042.
The positivity rate in the 24-hour period ending noon of February 24 was 6.1 percent as 1,664 out of 27,404 samples were found positive for Sars-CoV-2.
During the weekly Covid-19 briefing with President Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday, February 24, DOH Secretary Francisco Duque III said the situation was stabilizing as indicated by a plateau in the epidemic curve.
He said cases increased in January due to a so-called post-holiday surge, but slowed down in February.
“So nagpa-plateau na po tayo. If you look at last seven graphs, this simply shows that although after the holiday season there has been an increase in the --- ah slight, I repeat, slight increase in the number of cases, however, towards the end or mid-February this has flattened or the increase has actually slowed down,” Duque reported to the President.
As of February 24, Duque said the Philippines remained in the 31st spot worldwide in terms of cumulative number of Covid-19 cases.
In terms of active cases, the Philippines went down two notches to the 43rd spot.
“This looks good. Our ranking is going down, which is a good sign of our success in our pandemic response,” Duque said.
In terms of attack rate per one million population, the Philippines was in the 129th spot.
In terms of death per one million population, the Philippines was in the 116th spot.
The country’s case fatality rate, recorded at 2.14 percent on February 24, was the 69th highest worldwide. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)