MANILA – The Philippines is poised to have more than 1.9 million total COVID-19 cases before the end of August and 2 million by early September, the head of ABS-CBN News Data Analytics said Tuesday.

“In terms of cases, definitely I can see that we’ll breach 1.9 million total before the end of the month, and then 2 million total cases by early September,” Edson Guido told ANC’s “Dateline Philippines.”

Guido noted that cases have been rising faster in the country where, officials said, community transmission of the more transmissible COVID-19 Delta variant is already assumed.

• DOH: COVID-19 Delta variant 'community transmission is there'

“Actually from 1.7 million to 1.8 million cases, it only took 8 days. And that’s the fastest additional 100,000 cases for the country. But what we’re seeing now is that the next 100,000 is likely to be even faster,” he said.

Guido noted that a decrease in the rise in cases in NCR may happen in the second week of September.

But he adds that a decrease doesn’t mean the public should be complacent.

“If we do reach a point that we start to see a decrease in the number of daily cases, we should not be complacent. And the goal is really to push these numbers even lower before we do decide to relax most of our restrictions, because right now were averaging 15,000 daily cases.”

“So we shouldn’t be happy if we get this number to say, 8,000 or 10,000, because that’s still high. And we cannot afford another spike that would happen that would start at the base of 10,000,” he added.

Guido stressed the need to control the spread of COVID-19 in other parts of the country, noting that the fight is now a “battle on all fronts.”

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The Philippines logged an additional 12,067 fresh COVID cases on Tuesday, while the death toll breached the 32,000-mark.

Total number of cases stood at 1,869,691, of which 127,703 are active.

The country confirmed its first case on Jan. 30 last year in a Chinese woman who arrived from Wuhan, China where the disease is believed to have first emerged.

Since the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccination in the country last March 1, more than 13 million people have been fully vaccinated, representing around 17 percent of the government's target to inoculate up to 70 million before the year ends.

• COVID-19 deaths in the Philippines top 32,000; add'l 12,067 cases logged