MANILA — The health department on Thursday reported 1,594 new COVID-19 cases in the Philippines, raising the country’s total cases to 389,725.

The additional cases for the day do not include data from 10 accredited laboratories that failed to submit results on time, according to the Department of Health’s (DOH) bulletin.

The City of Manila led areas in the country that recorded the highest daily additional cases with 253, followed by the province of Cavite with 126. Davao City and Rizal both recorded 78 new infections, followed by Quezon City with 73.

Cases of recoveries jumped by 468 over the previous day. The total number of recovered patients stood at 349,543, which accounts for 89.7 percent of the total recorded cases.

The country also recorded 42 new fatalities from the respiratory illness, taking the death toll to 7,409.

To date, the Philippines has 32,773 active infections, accounting for 8.4 percent of the cumulative total cases. The DOH said 93.1 percent of patients currently ill are asymptomatic or exhibiting mild symptoms.

The DOH said that of the 24,153 people who were tested as of Wednesday noon, 1,944, or 8 percent, tested positive for the disease.

Watch more in iWantv or TFC.tv

A total of 6 duplicates were removed from the total tally, according to the health department. Of these, 2 were tagged as recovered cases.

Meanwhile, 14 cases initially tagged as recoveries were found to be deaths after validation.

‘Decline in daily cases might be due to PH Red Cross' halting of COVID-19 tests’

The OCTA Research Group earlier this week said the COVID-19 positivity rate in Metro Manila is declining steadily as the country's daily coronavirus cases also continue to decrease.

• PH daily infections, COVID-19 positivity rate in NCR steadily declining: OCTA group

The Philippines now ranks 22nd among nations with most coronavirus cases worldwide as it records around 1,000 daily average patients.

But OCTA Research Group’s Guido David said the decline in daily average cases may be due to the Philippine Red Cross' halt of government testing, which has since resumed, and the disruption of laboratory tests results due to the recent typhoons.

"We expect may mga backlog pa rin ng cases na biglang papasok. Pero ang trend na nakikita natin is still a real trend. Kasi, 'yung nakikita nating positivity rate, mababa na rin sa Metro Manila. Nasa 6 percent na lang. Malapit na (sa) 5 percent, ang target natin," he said.

(We expect backlogs in new cases that are coming in. Although, we are still seeing a real trend. The positivity rate we are seeing in Metro Manila has gone down. It's at 6 percent. It's already close to our target of 5 percent.)

• Holidays could bring 'uptick' in COVID-19 cases in PH: OCTA Research
• Dissecting Data: PH Red Cross-PhilHealth row blinding gov’t to status of outbreak

According to the Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus dashboard, more than 48.1 million people have been infected by the COVID-19 virus globally since the start of the pandemic. Of those, more than 1.2 million have died, and almost 32 million have recovered.