MANILA (UPDATE) — The Philippines' health department on Monday reported 205 new COVID-19 cases in the country, bringing the cumulative total to 12,718.

Of the new cases, 145 (71%) are from the National Capital Region, 8 (4%) are from Region 7 or Central Visayas, and 52 (25%) are from other regions.

Earlier this month, Central Visayas’ new COVID-19 cases surpassed that of Metro Manila, which the DOH attributed to the spread of the disease in jails in the region. The number has since gone down, although it is unclear if it is because of backlog in testing or the actual slowing down of the spread of the virus.

So if we break down the new cases by region:

- Cases from Region 7 (where Cebu City is) are now lower. Look at the orange bars. Delay in reporting or a real decline?

- Cases from other regions (in gray) are increasing and we'll continue to monitor this once we get the full data pic.twitter.com/2zBY8VTWf3

— Edson (@EdsonCGuido) May 18, 2020

The 205 new cases is the lowest in the past 8 days, although the DOH has not been releasing the daily testing capacity of its licensed laboratories.

Meanwhile, the country also recorded 94 new recovered COVID-19 patients, raising the total recoveries to 2,729.

The death toll, meanwhile, went up by 7 to 831.

“The 14 reported deaths in the past two days (7 yesterday + 7 today) is the lowest two-day total since March 29-30,” noted ABS-CBN Data Analytics Head Edson Guido.

According to DOH data, as of May 17, all COVID-19 cases in these 14 provinces have recovered: Abra (3 cases), Aklan (7), Bohol (1), Bukidnon (1), Camiguin (1), Compostela Valley (2), Davao Oriental (3), Guimaras (2), Ilocos Sur (1), Isabela (10), Maguindanao (1), Marinduque (6), Northern Samar (1), South Cotabato (4).

The Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus dashboards recorded 4.7 million people worldwide to have been infected with COVID-19. Of those, 1.7 million have recovered and more than 315,000 have died.