MANILA - One hundred twenty seven more deaths were reported from COVID-19 on Sunday, bringing the disease’s death toll in the Philippines to 28,016.

The Philippines confirmed 8,735 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday bringing the country’s total to 1,597,689.

The country reported conducting 50,116 tests on July 30, of which 14.9 percent were positive.

The Department of Health also reported 5,930 new recoveries, pushing the total number of Filipinos who recovered from the disease to 1,506,027.

This means that the country has a total of 63,646 active cases as of 4 p.m. Sunday.

The arrival in the country of the more contagious Delta variant of the virus that causes COVID-19, has caused worries among experts, with an independent think tank saying there may already be community transmission of the new variant in Metro Manila.

A government scientist said the Delta variant can infect up to 8 people at a time, who in turn can each infect 8 others, which drove the recent surge in Indonesia and India.

Meanwhile the country struggles to ramp up its vaccine rollout. The government has said that it wants to inoculate 58 million Filipinos by the end of the year, down from an initial 70 million target.

ABS-CBN News however has been tracking the number of vaccinations since March, and as of July 29, only 7,835,715 Filipinos have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. This means that the government has reached just 13.51 percent of the revised target after almost 5 months.

• Philippines: COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker

The government is putting the most economically productive region of the country, NCR, under the strictest of four lockdown levels from Aug. 6 to 20 to arrest the spread of the Delta variant.

The pandemic has already caused the Philippines to plunge into its worst economic contraction since World War 2, losing over P2 trillion in value in the 15 months since the virus started affecting the country.

• Dissecting Data: Economy sheds over P2 trillion in 15 months as quarantines bite

Worldwide, the novel coronavirus has infected over 197.8 million people and caused over 4.2 million deaths since it was first reported in Wuhan, China in late 2019 according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

The United States remains the most badly affected country with over 34.9 million infections and over 613,000 deaths.

India is the second most badly affected country, with 31.6 million infections. But in terms of deaths, Brazil has recorded more fatalities than India, with the South American country reporting over 556,000 COVID-19 deaths against India’s 424,000 confirmed fatalities.

The country’s first COVID-19 case was a 38-year-old Chinese woman from Wuhan, China.

The first COVID-19 death outside of China, was also recorded in the Philippines last year.

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