MANILA (UPDATED)—The Philippines on Saturday reported 7,443 new COVID-19 cases, with fatalities exceeding more than a hundred for the fourth straight day.

Saturday's newly confirmed cases pushed the country's cumulative total to 1,216,582, of which 53,614 or 4.4 percent are active.

The virus has killed 156 more people in the country, the latest bulletin showed, bringing the death toll to 20,722.

This included 91 cases initially tagged as recovered, but turned out to be fatalities after the Department of Health's (DOH) final validation.

The country has logged more than 100 new deaths since Wednesday, data showed.

Recoveries climbed by 7,533 to 1,142,246. This accounted for 93.9 percent of the country's running total.

Out of 46,442 individuals tested for COVID-19 on Thursday, 12.5 percent were found carriers of the virus.

Fifteen duplicate cases, 14 of which were recoveries, have been excluded from the overall tally, according to the DOH.

Two laboratories failed to submit data on time.

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Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire told reporters that the relatively higher COVID-19 cases in the past 2 days was due to the higher number of infections recorded outside the NCR Plus bubble.

• READ: DOH: High COVID-19 cases due to rise in infections outside NCR Plus

She added that the Visayas and Mindanao showed a spike in newly-reported cases.

• READ: 'COVID cases dropping in NCR Plus, rising in other regions'

As of Tuesday, nearly 4.5 million COVID-19 shots were already administered, since the government began its vaccination rollout in March.

Of this figure, more than 3.466 million Filipinos received their first dose, while 1.029 million were fully vaccinated against the disease.

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