MANILA (UPDATE) — The Philippines announced on Wednesday 1,196 new COVID-19 cases, the lowest daily tally in a week, according to the ABS-CBN Data Analytics Team, bringing the country's total to 464,004.

Eight laboratories failed to submit results on time, the Department of Health (DOH) said.

The DOH recorded 27 new COVID-related deaths, or a total of 9,048 fatalities.

There were also 564 additional recovered patients, or a total of 429,972 recoveries.

Areas with the most number of new cases are Quezon City with 123, Rizal with 84, Manila City with 74, Davao City with 54, and Batangas with 49.

The ABS-CBN Data Analytics Team said it is the 2nd straight day that Quezon City and Rizal topped the list.

Of the 24,984 active cases, 81.8% have mild symptoms, 9.5% are asymptomatic, 5.5% are in critical condition, 2.9% have severe symptoms, and 0.32% have moderate symptoms.

The DOH said it had to remove 7 duplicate entries, 4 of which were tagged as recovered.

There were also 7 cases tagged as recovered that turned out to be deaths after final validation.

Video courtesy of Kapihan sa Manila Bay

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said during a virtual forum on Wednesday morning that the new COVID-19 cases graph has “plateaued” while health facilities are no longer overwhelmed with patients.

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He said the country was seeing a downward trend, although “signs of a beginning surge have already been observed.”

“We have 8 to 9 cities in NCR (National Capital Region) that have registered a high attack rate and a 2 week growth rate,” he said, referring to the percentage of cases compared to the population and compared to previous weeks. “Luckily the health systems capacity is still within the safe zone.”

Duque said the daily number of more than a thousand is still considered high, and a more stable level would be double-digit cases.

“Right now, medyo mataas pa rin tayo (Right now, the cases are still high). We are hitting 1,500 to about 2,000 over the last several weeks,” he said.

The health chief reminded the public to continue following health protocols to help curb the spread of COVID-

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The OCTA Research Group previously estimated that the total number of cases in the country may reach 480,000 by the end of the year.

Since the start of the pandemic, 78 million people have been infected by the COVID-19 virus, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus dashboard. Of those, 1.7 million have died and 44 million have recovered. More than 35.7 million people are currently infected with COVID-19.