MANILA — The number of COVID-19 cases in the Philippines reached 83,673 on Tuesday with the Department of Health (DOH) reporting 1,678 additional infections.

Of the cumulative nationwide total, 55,109 are active cases.

This is the 2nd straight day that additional cases are below 2,000.

Of the new cases, 698 are from the National Capital Region, 218 from Laguna, 100 from Cebu province, 87 from Cavite and 33 from Davao del Sur.

The number of COVID-19 cases in the country continues to rise as the economy is gradually opened.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire on Tuesday said that hospital bed occupancy for COVID-19 cases in the country is already at 50%.

While it is considered at a warning zone, it is still manageable. Those in NCR and Region 4 or Calabarzon, however, are already in the danger zone.

There are also 173 additional recovered patients, or a total of 26,617 recoveries.

The death toll climbed by 4 to 1,947.

“Of the 4 (new) deaths, 2 (happened) in July and 2 in June. (The) deaths were from NCR (2) and Region 7 (2),” DOH said.

The additional cases reported on Tuesday were sourced from tests conducted by 81 out of 91 operational laboratories.

Meanwhile, 34 duplicate cases were removed from the previous tally.

“In addition, eleven (11) cases (found) to be false positives have been removed after final validation,” the DOH said.

“Moreover, two (2) cases that were previously reported to have died (have) been validated to have recovered, and were included in the count of new recoveries,” it added.

Since the start of the pandemic, 16.5 million people have been infected by the COVID-19 virus, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus dashboard. Of those, 654,000 have died and almost 9.6 million have recovered.