MANILA (UPDATE) — There are now 136,638 total confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Philippines after the Department of Health on Monday reported a new record-high of 6,958 additional cases in a single day.

With 633 additional recovered patients and 24 new COVID-related deaths, the country's active COVID-19 cases stood at 66,186. Active cases refer to patients who are still infected with COVID-19 and are staying either in the hospital or under home quarantine.

The total number of recoveries is at 68,159 while the total number of fatalities is 2,293.

The DOH said that majority or 83% of the additional cases were from the last 2 weeks.

Most of the 6,958 are from the National Capital Region (4,163), while the rest are from Laguna (400), Rizal (363), Cavite (312) and Bulacan (178). There are also 254 cases among returning overseas Filipinos.

“Our case clustering report showed that there are 380 clusters in NCR; 305 (80%) are in the communities and 34 (9%) in health facilities. CALABARZON has 174 case clusters and Region 7 with 171 case clusters – majority were also in communities,” the DOH said.

The additional cases are based on data from 74 out of 99 accredited testing laboratories.

Following the definition of fresh cases (test results released in the last 3 days) and late cases (those released earlier than 3 days but only validated recently), there are 5,394 fresh cases and 1,564 late cases out of the almost 7,000 newly reported infections.

Meanwhile, almost half (11) of the 24 additional deaths are from July, while 6 were in August, 4 in June, 2 in April, and 1 in May.

Most of the newly reported deaths are from Region 4A (9), followed by the National Capital Region (6) and Region 7 (4).

A total of 233 duplicate cases were removed from the total count, the DOH said, including 143 recovered cases and 1 death.

“We also updated the health status of six (6) cases that were previously reported as recovered but after final validation, they were deaths (4) and active (2) cases,” the DOH said.

Monday’s COVID-19 numbers were announced past 8 p.m., instead of the usual 4 p.m., due to an “unexpected system error” in the DOH centralized database.

• READ: System error delays release of Monday's COVID-19 case bulletin: DOH

The Philippines has been logging a minimum of 3,000 additional COVID-19 cases per day since July 30, following the easing of quarantine measures and the gradual opening up of the economy.

Because of this and the “flooding” of patients in hospitals, doctors called for stricter quarantine measures, which the government partially granted.

• READ: Exhausted health workers want 'breathing space', seek Metro Manila's return to ECQ

The DOH has vowed to collaborate with medical societies and to come up with new strategies during the modified enhanced community quarantine in Metro Manila which will last through Aug. 18.

Researchers from the University of the Philippines and the University of Santo Tomas have estimated that cases may reach 150,000 by the end of August.

• READ: ‘Alarming’: If trend holds, COVID cases could reach 150K by August’s end, says UP prof

Last week, the Philippines surpassed Indonesia with the most number of COVID-19 cases in Southeast Asia. It has also topped mainland China's case tally.

• READ: Philippines climbs to having most COVID-19 cases in Southeast Asia as tally nears 120,000

The country's first case involved a Chinese woman who arrived in late January from Wuhan City in China where the disease is believed to have first emerged.

Since the start of the pandemic, almost 19.9 million people have been infected by the COVID-19 virus, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus dashboard. Of those, 731,000 have died and 12.1 million have recovered.