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Pet dogs wearing face masks and face shields are seen on top of a pedicab along a street in Tondo, Manila on Good Friday, April 2, 2021. Religious activities and gatherings were prohibited for the rest of the Holy Week as the enhanced community quarantine at the so-called NCR Plus bubble continues. George Calvelo, ABS-CBN News
MANILA -- (UPDATE) The Philippines recorded another record-high number of new COVID-19 infections at 15,310, pushing the country's total cases to 771,497 on Friday as a stricter community quarantine classification is being imposed on Metro Manila and nearby provinces.
Health Spokesperson Maria Rosario Vergeire explained that 3,709 of the cases reported Friday were "backlogs" from March 31, when their system supposedly "encountered some issues in uploading cases."
"We have encountered some issues in uploading cases in the system last March 31. We have resolved this issue -- and we no longer have backlogs. However, with this, around 3.7K cases that were supposed to be reported last March 31 will just be reported today as part of the total cases," she said.
On March 31, the DOH reported only 6,128 new cases.
Without the March 31 backlog, new single day infections on Friday would still be a record high at 11,601.
The DOH added that 12 duplicates were removed from the total case count, 9 of those are recoveries. Moreover, 5 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.
Seven labs were not able to submit their data for Friday's case report.
Meanwhile, fatalities due to the respiratory illness have also increased to 13,320, up 17 from the previous count.
Cases of recoveries jumped by 434, bringing the total of those who were given a clean bill of health to 604,368.
Daily government statistics showed 153,809 patients are still infected by the new coronavirus, of whom 96.3 percent were exhibiting mild symptoms.
The country is facing a surge in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks amid the presence of more contagious coronavirus variants. On Monday, its daily coronavirus infection crossed 10,000 for the first time since the pandemic started.
The government ratched up restrictions on movement in Metro Manila and 4 surrounding provinces until April 4 to quash fresh infections and avert straining its health-care system further.
The Philippines began its vaccination drive on March 1, much later than other countries, and has so far inoculated more than 738,000 people, mostly health-care workers.
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