MANILA — The number of people in the Philippines who died due to COVID-19 climbed past 17,000 on Wednesday as total coronavirus infections in the country reached 1,020,495, data from the health department showed.

According to the latest COVID-19 bulletin of the Department of Health (DOH), the death toll climbed by 115 to 17,031, accounting for 1.67 percent of the cumulative total cases.

The Department of Health (DOH) said 6,895 additional COVID-19 cases have been recorded, the lowest in 3 weeks, according to the ABS-CBN Investigative and Research Group.

These do not include data from 1 testing laboratory that was non-operational on Monday, and 5 laboratories that were unable to submit their results on time.

The bulletin also said the number of cases reported on Wednesday was lower than usual because of the lower testing output of laboratories on Monday.

Total recoveries increased by 10,739 to 935,695.

Active COVID-19 cases in the country stood at 67,769 or 6.6% of the total recorded infections. This is the lowest number of active cases since March 18 this year, according to the ABS-CBN Data Analytics Team.

Of those currently battling the disease, 94.9% have mild symptoms, 1.6% are asymptomatic, 0.95% have moderate symptoms, 1.4% have severe symptoms, and 1.1% are in critical condition.

Eighteen cases, 12 tagged as recovered, were removed from the official total count due to duplicate entries.

There were also 59 cases initially tagged as recovered that turned out to be deaths after final validation.

The country has been seeing a surge in COVID-19 cases due to the variants of the virus and non-compliance with health protocols, especially in Metro Manila and nearby provinces.

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The Philippine government, which is struggling to curb the disease, has received criticism for the slow rollout of vaccines, which it attributes to the limited global supply.

Of the 3.5 million vaccines received by the country, only 1.8 million have been administered after rollout started in March.

There are 59.3 million people currently infected with COVID-19 worldwide. Since the start of the pandemic, 148.7 million people have contracted the disease, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus dashboard. Of those, more than 3.1 million have died and almost 86.3 million have recovered.

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