MANILA (UPDATE) - The Philippines on Friday reported 3,379 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, raising the nationwide caseload to 122,754, as the capital region remained under a stricter quarantine status.

In its latest bulletin, the Department of Health (DOH) said the number of people who recovered from the contagious disease climbed by 96 to 66,852.

The country's COVID-19 death toll rose to 2,168, with 24 new fatalities recorded.

Latest DOH figures also showed the Philippines had 53,734 active cases, of which 91.4 percent exhibited mild symptoms, 7.3 percent were asymptomatic, 0.7 percent were in severe condition and 0.5 percent were critical.

Metro Manila, the country's epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis, recorded the most new COVID-19 cases with 1,846. It is followed by Rizal (314), Laguna (276), Cavite (145) and Quezon (66).

The DOH also clarified that some 85 duplicates were removed from the total tally, of which 58 were recoveries and 6 were fatalities.

"Moreover, 23 cases that were previously reported to have recovered has been validated to have died and were included in the count of new deaths," it said.

To date, the Philippines has tested 1,559,213 individuals for COVID-19, of which 151,816 were found positive for the virus.

The health ministry had previously explained that positive cases would still undergo validation as some may be repeat tests or erroneous entries.

Despite having one of the world's longest lockdown, the Philippines overtook Indonesia as the country with the most COVID-19 cases in Southeast Asia.

To arrest the contagion, the government imposed stricter quarantine measures anew in Metro Manila, Cavite, Laguna, Rizal and Bulacan.

Since emerging in China in December, the novel coronavirus has sickened 19 million people and killed 715,000, according to a running tally from US-based Johns Hopkins University.