The number of new coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) infections stayed below 30,000 for the second straight day, with only 22,958 new cases recorded on Wednesday.

In its Covid-19 bulletin, the Department of Health (DOH) said this raised the active case tally to 270,728, lower than Tuesday’s 284,458.

Among the active cases, 257,632 are mild, 2,970 are moderate, 8,335 are asymptomatic, 1,487 are severe, and 304 are critical.

Wednesday’s fresh infections are also lower than Tuesday’s 28,471.

Meanwhile, another 36,611 recoveries raised the recovery count to 2,969,853 or 90.2 percent of a total of 3,293,625 infections recorded since the pandemic started in March 2020.

“Of the 22,959 reported cases today, 21,691 (94 percent) occurred within the recent 14 days — Jan. 6, 2021 to Jan. 19, 2022,” the DOH said.

The regions with the most cases in the past two weeks were the National Capital Region (NCR) with 7,861 or 36 percent of new infections; Region 4-A (Calabarzon), 4,647 or 21 percent; and Central Luzon, 2,049 or 9 percent.

The death toll is now at 53,044 with the addition of 82 new fatalities, representing 1.61 percent of overall cases.

Of the 82 deaths, 56 occurred in January 2022 (68 percent), eight in October 2021 (10 percent), 15 in September 2021 (18 percent), one in July 2021 (1 percent), one in May 2021 (1 percent), and one in January 2021 (1 percent) due to the late encoding of death information to COVIDKaya, the DOH said.

The data as of January 17 show that about 43.5 percent of the 62,532 who were tested have turned out positive for Covid-19.

“About 91 duplicates were removed from the total case count as 64 of these are recoveries,” the department said.

Meanwhile, 32 cases previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after validation.

All laboratories were operational on January 17 but six were not able to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System.

The DOH said the six laboratories contribute, on average, 1.5 percent of samples tested, and 1.9 percent among positive individuals based on data in the past 14 days.

To date, 49 percent of 3,700 intensive care unit (ICU) beds, 51 percent of 20,300 isolation beds, 53 percent of 14,300 ward beds, and 23 percent of 3,100 ventilators are used by patients with Covid-19 nationwide.

Meanwhile, 53 percent of 1,200 ICU beds, 48 percent of 4,900 isolation beds, 60 percent of 4,500 ward beds, and 29 percent of 1,100 ventilators dedicated to patients with Covid-19 are in use in the NCR. (PNA)