MANILA (UPDATE) - The Philippines confirmed 1,768 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday bringing the country’s total to 439,834.

The Department of Health also reported 9,062 new recoveries as the DOH implemented its weekly “mass recovery” pushing the total number of Filipinos who recovered from the disease to 408,634.

This meant that the country has a total of 22,646 active cases as of 4 p.m. Sunday.

Twenty nine more deaths were reported from the illness, bringing COVID-19’s death toll in the Philippines to 8,554.

Quezon City reported the most new confirmed cases at 112. Laguna province had 94 new cases, while Rizal had 90, Davao City had 71 and Benguet province had 69.

The Philippines' Food and Drug Administrationhas said that itmay approve the emergency use of coronavirus vaccine in January

The country’s first COVID-19 case was a 38-year-old Chinese woman from Wuhan, China.

Worldwide, the novel coronavirus has infected around 66.88 million people and caused nearly 1.53 million deaths since it first emerged in Wuhan, China in late 2019 according to tracking website worldometers.info.

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The United States remains the most badly affected country with over 14.98 million infections and over 287,000 deaths.

India follows the US with over 9.64 million infections. Brazil ranks third with over 6.57 million infections but is second in terms of deaths with over 176,000 COVID-19 fatalities.

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