Seventeen new cases of the coronavirus disease 2019 or Covid-19 were logged in Metro Manila last Sunday, 5 February, the lowest in the capital region since 20 March 2020, a private research group reported Monday.

The group’s lead researcher, Dr. Guido David, said the figure was the lowest since Covid-19 started becoming a global health concern in March 2020.

“The seven-day average dipped to 46 cases per day,” David said over Twitter, noting that the region’s weekly positivity rate dropped to 1.7 percent as of 4 February.

The dip in the past week followed Metro Manila having the most infections in the last two weeks at 614 cases, followed by CALABARZON with 268, Region XI with 175, Region VI with 151 and Region III with 138.

Still, Guido noted the low testing rate of 35 per day per 100,000 individuals.

He added that the nationwide positivity rate also declined further to 1.8 percent as of last Sunday, during which the country logged 36 new cases, 12 deaths, 217 recoveries, and 9,378 active cases.

The 36 cases nationwide were also the lowest daily total since 20 March 2020 or two years, 10 months and 16 days ago near the pandemic’s start.

At the same time, the 36 total is the smallest tally in 1,052 days and the sixth straight day with fewer than 200 cases reported.

The 9,378 tally of active cases also proved to be the lowest in 218 days since 2 July 2021 when 9,105 active cases were reported.

Since the start of the pandemic, the country has logged 4,073,826 of which 3,998,597 recovered. A total of 65,851 have died from the virus that was first detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, China.