(File photo) MANILA - About 70.76 percent of the country's target population has been vaccinated against the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), the Department of Health (DOH) said Monday. In its latest case bulletin, the DOH also reported 74.22 percent of the senior citizens have been inoculated against the disease. The elderly group is composed of 8,721,357 individuals while the country's target population for inoculation is 80 percent (90,005,357 individuals) of the country's entire population. As of March 6, DOH data showed 63,690,701 individuals are fully vaccinated while 10,554,093 people have received their booster shots. On the healthcare utilization, the DOH reported 1,055 severe and critical cases admitted in hospitals nationwide due to Covid-19. Only 25.7 percent or 807 out of the 3,138 intensive care unit (ICU) beds in the country are used while 18.4 percent of 4,543 non-ICU beds are utilized. For the period from March 1 to 7, the DOH logged 6,297 new cases while the daily average cases for the recent week is 899 or 30 percent lower than the new infections reported on Feb. 22 to 28. As for deaths due to Covid-19, the DOH recorded 615 fatalities from March 1 to 7. "Of the 615 deaths, 39 occurred in March 2022 (6.3 percent), 195 in February 2022 (31.7 percent), 104 in January 2022 (16.9 percent), 4 in December 2021 (0.7 percent), 16 in November 2021 (2.6 percent), 37 in October 2021 (6.0 percent), 53 in September 2021 (8.6 percent), 29 in August 2021 (4.7 percent), 11 in July 2021 (1.8 percent), 15 in June 2021 (2.4 percent), 16 in May 2021 (2.6 percent), 24 in April 2021 (3.9 percent), 35 in March 2021 (5.7 percent), 5 in February 2021 (0.8 percent), 1 in January 2021 (0.2 percent), 1 in December 2020 (0.2 percent), 9 in November 2020 (1.5 percent), 4 in October 2020 (0.7 percent), 6 in September 2020 (1.0 percent), 6 in August 2020 (1.0 percent), 3 in July 2020 (0.5 percent), 1 in April 2020 (0.2 percent), and 1 in March 2020 (0.2 percent) due to 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. Last week, the DOH said its case bulletins will be released on a weekly basis - focusing on the number of severe and critical cases, deaths, healthcare utilization, and vaccination coverage starting March 7. (PNA) }