MANILA, Philippines (Updated 4:40 p.m.) — Health officials on Sunday reported 3,311 new cases of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and 20,021 patients who have since recovered from the pathogen.
This brings the case and recovery totals to 286,743 and 229,865, respectively.
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In its latest case bulletin issued on Sunday afternoon, the Department of Health also recorded 55 more deaths from the sickness, bringing the new pathogen's death toll in the Philippines to 4,984.
Virus epicenter Metro Manila again topped the regions with new cases, making up 43% or 1,182 of the new cases logged by the department Sunday.
It is followed by Calabarzon with 555 new cases, and Western Visayas with 299.
Furthermore, the department disclosed that a total of 2,774 or 84% of the newly-recorded cases happened in the last 14 days from September 7 to September 20.
The remaining cases account for backlog as far back as March.
According to DOH data, almost 3.2 million people have been tested for the coronavirus in the country.
Over the week, the national caseload increased by 25,527 cases since Sunday, September 13.
It increased by 23,851 cases the week before that, from September 6 to September 13.
Over 30.9 million cases of the coronavirus, along with over 961,000 deaths, have been recorded all over the world according to the World Health Organization’s latest bulletin.
The Philippines remains the country with the most number of COVID-19 infections in Southeast Asia and under the world's longest quarantine, having gone 187 days since the first imposition of enhanced community quarantine.
Earlier this week, Palace spokesperson Harry Roque said he would personally give the government a grade of 85% for its performance in dealing with the pandemic.
In the past, Roque also once reminded Filipinos not to have what he said was the "wrong view" that the coronavirus situation is bad in the Philippines, pointing out that other nations around the world are going through it, too, and things could be worse.
He added then that it should be expected for circumstances to be bad because everyone is struggling.
Just the day before, on Saturday, the Philippines also surpassed the 280,000-mark with 3,962 new infections recorded.
Accounting for the casualties and recuperations, there are now still 51,894 active cases in the country, or patients still infected with the virus accounting for the casualties and recoveries.