The Department of Health on Sunday recorded 870 new cases of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) and 1,433 more recoveries.

From 49,374 active cases the day before, the tally is down to 48,793 active cases, of which 44,131 are mild, 2,693 are moderate, 401 are asymptomatic, 1,279 are severe, and 289 are critical.

Recovered cases have reached 3,561,726 or 97.1 percent of 3,667,542 confirmed infections two years since the pandemic began.

“Of the 870 reported cases today, 799 (92 percent) occurred within the recent 14 days, February 21 to March 6, 2022,” the DOH reported.

The regions with the most cases in the recent two weeks were the National Capital Region with 212 or 27 percent, Calabarzon with 126 or 16 percent, and Central Visayas with 80 or 10 percent.

The death toll has reached 57,023 with 144 new deaths, representing 1.55 percent of overall cases.

“Of the 144 deaths, 12 occurred in March 2022 (8 percent), 64 in February 2022 (44 percent), 48 in January 2022 (33 percent), 3 in December 2021 (2 percent), 6 in November 2021 (4 percent), 4 in October 2021 (3 percent), and 7 in September 2021 (5 percent) due to the late encoding of death information to COVIDKaya,” the DOH said.

COVIDKaya is a digital application used by health care workers to collect and share data about Covid-19 cases.

According to the March 1 data, about 3.9 percent of 24,543 who were tested turned out positive for coronavirus.

About six duplicates were removed from the total case count as two of those were recoveries.

Meanwhile, 130 cases previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after validation.

All laboratories were operational on March 4, but five laboratories were not able to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System.

The DOH said the five laboratories contributed, on average, 0.8 percent of samples tested, and 0.5 percent among positive individuals based on data in the past 14 days.

To date, 25 percent of 3,700 intensive care unit (ICU) beds, 22 percent of 20,500 isolation beds, 14 percent of 14,000 ward beds, and 12 percent of 3,000 ventilators are used by patients with Covid-19 nationwide.

In the NCR, 25 percent of 1,300 ICU beds, 21 percent of 4,600 isolation beds, 24 percent of 3,900 ward beds, and 15 percent of 1,000 ventilators dedicated to patients with Covid-19 are in use. (PNA)