MANILA, Philippines — Coronavirus cases in the Philippines reached 248,947 Thursday as the Department of Health announced more than 3,000 additional infections.
Data from the DOH showed that 3,821 more people have contracted the novel coronavirus, of which 54% or 2,079 were from Metro Manila.
Other top reporting areas in terms of new cases include Rizal (286), Cavite (174), Laguna (168) and Bulacan (142).
The department earlier said that the public should expect “irregularly high number” of COVID-19 cases in the coming days as more laboratories comply to its new directive. The DOH now requires all accredited laboratories to submit the addresses and phone number of people tested for the coronavirus to help improve the government’s contact tracing strategy.
Thursday’s case tally was based on the submissions of 105 out of 117 operational laboratories.
Deaths surpass 4,000
Deaths related to COVID-19 hit 4,066 after 80 more people succumbed to the severe respiratory illness. Most of the newly announced fatalities were from Metro Manila.
Twenty-two of the additional deaths occurred in September, 33 in August, 10 in July, 11 in June and three in May.
The Philippines has the second-highest number of COVID-19-related deaths in Southeast Asia, behind Indonesia with 8,336.
Meanwhile, the DOH logged 563 more recovered patients, pushing the number of recoveries to 186,058.
Of the total confirmed cases, 58,823 were active.
There were 17 duplicates removed from the case tally as COVID-19 data undergo “constant cleaning and validation.” There were also 36 cases that were previously reported as recovered but turned out to be deaths after final validation.
Some 2.764 million people have been so far tested in the country.
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 900,000 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December. More than 27.69 million cases have been registered.