The Department of Health on Monday recorded 1,534 new cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), pushing the nation’s overall tally of confirmed infections to 3,655,709.

Wednesday’s record is 515 cases higher than Tuesday’s 1,019, the lowest single day tally of infections this year.

The latest Covid-19 bulletin indicated 55,449 active cases while total recoveries rose to 3,544,283 after 2,729 new recovered cases were recorded.

Out of the active cases, 50,258 are mild, 2,811 are moderate, 652 are asymptomatic, 1,426 are severe, and 302 are critical.

“Of the 1,534 reported cases today, 1,057 (69 percent) occurred within the recent 14 days – February 10 to 23, 2022,” the DOH reported.

The regions with the most cases in the recent two weeks were the National Capital Region (NCR) with 205 or 19 percent, Central Luzon with 114 or 11 percent, and Calabarzon with 113 or 11 percent.

The death toll has reached 55,977 with 201 new deaths, representing 1.53 percent of overall cases.

“Of the 201 deaths, 69 occurred in February 2022 (34 percent), 118 in January 2022 (59 percent), 2 in December 2021 (1 percent), 1 in November 2021 (0 percent), 4 in October 2021 (2 percent), and 7 in September 2021 (3 percent) due to the late encoding of death information to COVIDKaya,” the DOH said.

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

According to the February 21 data, about 6.1 percent of 24,527 who were tested turned out positive for coronavirus.

“Some 109 duplicates were removed from the total case count as 99 of these are recoveries,” the DOH said.

Meanwhile, 187 cases previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after validation.

All laboratories were operational on February 21 but two were not able to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System.

The DOH said the two laboratories contributed, on average, 0.7 percent of samples tested, and 0.7 percent among positive individuals based on data in the past 14 days.

To date, 29 percent of 3,800 intensive care unit (ICU) beds, 25 percent of 20,500 isolation beds, 18 percent of 13,900 ward beds, and 16 percent of 3,000 ventilators are used by patients with Covid-19 nationwide.

In the NCR, 25 percent of 1,300 ICU beds, 24 percent of 4,600 isolation beds, 25 percent of 3,600 ward beds, and 17 percent of 1,000 ventilators dedicated to patients with Covid-19 are in use. (PNA)