MANILA (UPDATED)— The Philippines on Friday recorded 7,450 new COVID-19 cases, the highest daily tally in a week, with the number of active cases also at the peak in almost a month.

The country now has 1,255,337 total confirmed COVID-19 cases, of which 60,794 or 4.8 percent are considered active infections, the latest bulletin read.

According to the ABS-CBN Investigative and Research Group, the day's number of active cases is considered the highest since May 8 this year, when the country had 61,733 active carriers of the disease.

The number of active cases has been adjusted for duplicates.

There were 181 newly reported deaths due to the virus, bringing the country's death toll to 21,537.

According to the Department of Health (DOH), most of the day's deaths, or 119 cases, were initially tagged as recoveries.

Except for Tuesday, the country had registered more than 100 deaths since May 26.

Recoveries rose to 1,173,006 with 2,382 fresh recuperations, the lowest in nearly 7 weeks or since April 17, according to the ABS-CBN Investigative and Research Group.

The ABS-CBN Data Analytics team, meanwhile, said this is the lowest number of recoveries since the health department veered away from its weekly "mass recoveries" and began its daily recovery tagging.

>READ: https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/04/21/21/covid-19-mass-recovery-tagging-now-daily-in-bid-to-address-skewed-data-says-doh

The total number of recoveries accounts for 93.4 percent of the country's running tally.

Friday's positivity rate is down to 13.6 percent from 14 percent on Thursday. This is based on samples from 48,862 individuals who underwent testing for COVID-19 on Wednesday.

A total of 12 duplicates have been excluded from the total recorded cases, of which 9 were recoveries and 1 is a death.

Five laboratories failed to submit data.

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As of Wednesday, the country has administered nearly 5.4 million COVID-19 shots, of which 4.08 million are first vaccine doses.

Nearly 1.3 million Filipinos, meanwhile, are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, or 2.23 percent of the minimum 58 million target by yearend.

• Philippines: COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker

According to US-based Johns Hopkins University, almost 172.2 million people globally have been infected by the novel coronavirus, more than a year since it emerged from the city of Wuhan in China.

Some 3.7 million people worldwide, meanwhile, have died due to the disease.