MANILA (UPDATED) — The Philippines on Wednesday registered 13,573 new COVID-19 cases, while active cases counted over 125,000, data from the health department showed.

The ABS-CBN Investigative and Research Group (IRG) noted that the day's fresh infections is the 10th highest since the pandemic began in the Philippines.

This is also the 15th straight day that new cases were more than 10,000, according to the research unit.

The country now has a total 1,883,088 confirmed coronavirus infections, of which 125,378 or 6.7 percent are active, according to the Department of Health's (DOH) latest bulletin.

The DOH attributed the day's relatively fewer number of new infections to the "lower laboratory output" on Monday.

The ABS-CBN IRG said Wednesday’s number of active cases is the lowest in 4 days or since Aug. 21 when the country registered 123,685 active cases.

This is also the 11th straight day that those still battling the disease counted over 100,000, data showed.

The number of active cases in previous days has been adjusted for duplicates.

Meanwhile, ABS-CBN Data Analytics head Edson Guido pointed out that the Department of Health (DOH) has so far reported nearly 300,000 new COVID-19 cases in August alone, the worst month in the country’s fight against the coronavirus.

The positivity rate is at 25.5 percent, based on test results of samples from 46,193 individuals on Monday. Guido said the day's positivity rate is the 2nd highest since data became available.

There were also 228 new deaths and 15,820 more recoveries.

The freshly announced fatalities included 152 caess first tagged as recoveries.

These raised the country's total fatalities to 32,492 and total recuperations to 1,725,218.

A total of 176 duplicates, 174 of which are recoveries, have been excluded from the cumulative total, the DOHJ said.

Seven laboratories failed to submit data on time.

HEALTH CARE CAPACITY

Based on the DOH’s bulletin, the country’s intensive care unit (ICU) bed utilization rate is at 72 percent.

In Metro Manila, the ICU bed occupancy rate is at 73 percent.

Guido considered such rates as high risk.

Meanwhile, some big hospitals in the capital region have already announced critical to full occupancy, particularly the Philippine General Hospital (PGH), the country’s biggest COVID-19 referral hospital.

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The Philippines is struggling to contain a surge of new infections amid the presence of several variants, including the more transmissible COVID-19 Delta variant.

The Delta variant ripped through the health care system of India at its peak in April, while experts tagged it as behind the spike of cases in several Southeast Asian nations.

As of Monday, nearly 13.2 million Filipinos are fully vaccinated.

• Philippines: COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker