MANILA — The number of COVID-19 cases in the Philippines reached 182,365 after the Department of Health reported 4,786 additional COVID-19 cases.

Friday's tally is the 4th highest number of additional cases reported in a single day since the start of the pandemic.

ABS-CBN Data Analytics Head Edson Guido said this brings to 90,000 the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases just for the first 3 weeks of August.

More than half or 2,716 of the additional cases, which is based on the reports of 103 out of 109 laboratories, were from the National Capital Region. The rest were from Cavite (267), Laguna (222), Batangas (185) and Rizal (185).

Metro Manila on Thursday already reached more than 100,000 COVID-19 cases.

• READ: Metro Manila COVID-19 cases soar past 100,000; more than half of all PH infections

Majority or 77% of the additional COVID-19 cases were from the last 2 weeks with NCR and Region 4 as the main sources of the recent infections.

The DOH also logged 616 additional recovered patients or a total of 114,519 recoveries.

There are also 59 additional COVID-related deaths or a total of 2,940 fatalities. Majority or 41 of the additional deaths were from the month of August, followed by 16 in July and 2 in April. Almost half of the deaths were from NCR (28 deaths), followed by Region 4A (11), Region 6 (9), Region 8 (5), and BARMM (3). Region 7, Region 3, and Region 1 had 1 fatality each.

This brings the number of active cases or patients who are still infected with COVID-19 to 64,906.

A total of 443 duplicated cases were removed from the previous tally. This included 189 cases that were tagged as recovered.

“Moreover, there were twenty-two (22) cases that were previously reported as recovered but after final validation, they were deaths (6) and active (16) cases,” the DOH said. “There's also two (2) cases that were previously reported as death but have been validated as active cases.”

This week, the Ateneo Center for Economic Research and Development reported that there were around 3 million Filipinos who could be infected with COVID-19.

• READ: Some 3 million COVID-19 cases could be undetected in PH, claims study

University of the Philippines mathematics professor Guido David, who also does projections for the UP OCTA Research Group, said the 3 million estimate might be inaccurate but it is normal to have underreporting, as seen in other countries.

During a virtual forum organized by the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP), David said that they are now estimating a total of 230,000 COVID-19 cases in the Philippines for the end of August. This takes into consideration the decision of the government to return to a modified enhanced community quarantine and then back to general community quarantine.

He said the number of cases have relatively slowed down and that a total of 220,000 by the end of the month would be a “good result.”

The Philippines has been logging record-high numbers of new COVID-19 cases since late July, following the easing of quarantine measures and the gradual opening up of the economy.

Additional cases went up to more than 1,000 per day in July, and more or less doubled in August, with around 3,000 additional cases reported daily.

Since the start of the pandemic, nearly 22.7 million people have been infected by the COVID-19 virus, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus dashboard. Of those, 794,000 have died and 14.5 million have recovered.