The Department of Health on Monday logged 1,427 new cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), pushing the nation’s overall tally of confirmed infections to 3,653,526.

This is so far the lowest number of daily infections recorded in the country this year and the third straight day where fresh infections are below 2,000.

The latest Covid-19 bulletin indicated 58,657 active cases while total recoveries rose to 3,539,106 after 3,269 new recovered cases were recorded.

Out of the active cases, 53,326 are mild, 2,845 are moderate, 760 are asymptomatic, 1,422 are severe, and 304 are critical.

“Of the 1,427 reported cases today, 1,389 (97 percent) occurred within the recent 14 days — Feb. 8 to 21, 2022,” the DOH reported.

The regions with the most cases in the recent two weeks were the National Capital Region (NCR) with 318 or 23 percent, Calabarzon with 168 or 12 percent, and Western Visayas with 159 or 11 percent of the new infections.

The death toll has reached 55,763 with 79 new deaths, representing 1.53 percent of overall cases.

“Of the 79 deaths, 66 occurred in February 2022 (84 percent), eight in January 2022 (10 percent), four in October 2021 (5 percent), and one in September 2021 (1 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 19 data, about 7.5 percent of 25,000 who were tested turned out positive for coronavirus.

“Some 104 duplicates were removed from the total case count as 98 of these are recoveries,” the DOH said.

Meanwhile, 52 cases previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after validation.

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

The DOH said the three laboratories contributed, on average, 0.1 percent of samples tested, and 0.3 percent among positive individuals based on data in the past 14 days.

To date, 30 percent of 3,800 intensive care unit (ICU) beds, 24 percent of 20,700 isolation beds, 20 percent of 14,500 ward beds, and 16 percent of 2,100 ventilators are used by patients with Covid-19 nationwide.

In the NCR, 28 percent of 1,200 ICU beds, 22 percent of 4,600 isolation beds, 26 percent of 4,100 ward beds, and 19 percent of 1,000 ventilators dedicated to patients with Covid-19 are in use. (PNA)