MANILA (UPDATE) - The Philippines on Wednesday reported 1,594 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, raising the nationwide caseload to 72,269.

Of the newly-announced infections, 971 came from Metro Manila, 252 from Cebu, 53 from Zamboanga del Sur, 35 from Negros Occidental and 26 from Rizal, the Department of Health (DOH) said in its latest bulletin.

Dr. Beverly Lorraine Ho, DOH director for health promotion and communication service, said the number of people who were given clean bill of health from coronavirus infection rose by 342 to 23,623.

The health ministry also reported 6 new fatalities from the contagious disease, bringing the death toll to 1,843.

The active cases are 46,803, of which 90.1 percent are exhibiting mild symptoms, 9 percent are asymptomatic, 0.5 percent are in severe condition, and 0.4 percent are critical.

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Official figures from the DOH showed the country had so far conducted COVID-19 tests on more than 1.1 million people. There are already 91 licensed laboratories for such testing.

From July 14 to 20, the average number of tests conducted in a day is 24,695. The most number of tests in a day during that week was 28,395, conducted on July 17, which still falls short of the government's target of 30,000 tests in a day.

While the coronavirus infections continue to increase due to community transmission and the expanded testing capacity, Ho said the country's case doubling time, or the time it takes for newly-reported cases to increase two-fold, had slowed to 8.47 days.

It is the same for the doubling time for COVID-19-related fatalities, at 11.97 days, she said.

"Bagama't matagal ang pagdoble ng kaso, ang goal natin ay umabot ito sa 30 days na case doubling time. We all have to work hard for this so the transmission would not be active as it is now," Ho said of the case doubling time.

Worldwide, the novel coronavirus, which first emerged in Wuhan City in China's Hubei province, has infected nearly 15 million people and killed 616,000 others, a running tally from US-based Johns Hopkins University showed.