MANILA (UPDATE) — The Philippines on Saturday logged 2,058 newly-confirmed COVID-19 cases, pushing the country’s total to 498,691, the Department of Health (DOH) said.

This is the second straight day that the daily tally counted over 2,000 but it does not include data from 5 laboratories that failed to submit results to the COVID-19 Data Repository System.

OCTA Research Group’s Dr. Guido David earlier in the day said that the recent rise in infections may be attributed to increased activity over the holidays.

• READ: OCTA Group says yet to see impact of Nazarene feast, new COVID-19 variant on PH caseload

Topping the list of areas with the most number of new COVID-19 infections were Cavite and Rizal with 96 new cases each, followed by Leyte with 92, Quezon City with 85, and Mountain Province with 84 additional infections.

Active COVID-19 cases reached 28,674, which accounted for 5.7 percent of the total recorded cases. Some 92.4 percent of patients were asymptomatic or exhibiting mild symptoms, while 4.6 percent were critically ill, according to the DOH.

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The number of coronavirus-related deaths rose to 9,884 after the DOH registered 8 additional deaths.

Recoveries, meanwhile, went up by 406 to 460,133 accounting for 92.3 percent of the total recorded cases.

Of the 18,322 people who were tested as of Friday noon, 1,072 or 5.9 percent were confirmed positive for the disease, data showed.

A total of 13 duplicates were removed from the tally, 9 of which were discovered to be recovered cases, according to the health department.

A case previously tagged as recovered, on the other hand, was reclassified as death after the DOH’s final validation.

The OCTA Research Group earlier also said that they have yet to see the effects of the Feast of the Black Nazarene, which saw the gathering of thousands of devotees last week, and the new variant of COVID-19 on the number of infections in the country.

The Philippines is on alert for the new variant of COVID-19, with one case confirmed earlier this week in a Filipino man who had returned from Dubai. Travelers from 35 countries where the new strain had spread are banned from the country until at least the end of the month.

Almost 94 million people globally have contracted COVID-19, with the US, India, Brazil, Russia, and the United Kingdom (UK) having the highest number of cumulative cases as of this posting, according to the Johns Hopkins University’s (JHU) running tally.

Over 2 million people have died while 51.7 million have recovered, data from the tally showed.