MANILA, Philippines (Updated 4:25 p.m.) — The Philippines recorded 3,379 new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases Friday, pushing the national caseload to over 122,000, the Department of Health said.
To date, the country has 122,754 COVID-19 cases—the most in Southeast Asia. This is higher than Indonesia’s 118,753 infections as of Thursday.
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Around 55% of the newly-reported cases were from outbreak epicenter Metro Manila, which returned to a tougher lockdown due to a recent surge in infections. Meanwhile, Rizal had 314 cases, Laguna has 276, Cavite had 145 and Quezon had 66.
The death toll rose by 24 to 2,168.
Meanwhile, recoveries grew to 66,852 after 96 more people were reported to have survived the disease. Total recoveries accounted for around 54% on the country’s confirmed cases.
The DOH said it had removed 85 cases from the total case count.
Palace: Wrong to say Philippines has more cases than Indonesia
The Philippines recorded the highest number of virus cases in Southeast Asia despite imposing the longest lockdown in the region.
But Malacañang refused to accept this fact and claimed the numbers were only a product of the country’s increased testing capacity. Some 1.577 million people have been tested so far for coronavirus.
“Dahil mas maigting ang ating pagte-test, hindi po totoo na mas marami tayong kaso sa Indonesia. Hindi lang nalalaman ng mga Indonesian kung sino sino ‘yung mga umiikot na mayroong sakit. At least tayo, alam natin kung sino sila,” presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said in a press briefing.
(Because we are more aggressive in testing, it’s not true that we have more cases than Indonesia. The Indonesians just don’t know yet who among them are roaming with the virus. At least, for us, we already know.)
But the Philippines also has 53,734 active cases or patients who are currently ill—higher than Indonesia’s 37,587 active cases.
In terms of population ratio versus number of cases, the Philippines has 1,058 cases per million people, while Indonesia has 427 cases per million, according to Our World in Data.
President Rodrigo Duterte announced late Sunday a two-week lockdown in Metro Manila, Bulacan, Rizal, Cavite and Laguna after medical workers warned the health care system could collapse as a result of increasing number of coronavirus patients.
The number of virus cases recorded worldwide passed 19 million with more than 712,000 deaths.