MANILA (UPDATE) — The Philippines on Thursday confirmed 6,483 more COVID-19 infections, pushing the country's total recorded cases to over 1.2 million.

The day's fresh cases brought the country's running tally to 1,200,430, of which 48,109 or 4 percent are considered active, according to the Department of Health (DOH).

The ABS-CBN Investigative and Research Group noted this is the first time in 5 days that the number of those still battling the disease increased, up by 1,938 from Wednesday's 46,171.

The number of active cases has been adjusted for duplicates.

ABS-CBN Data Analytics head Edson Guido said the country was able to record some 100,000 new cases in just 18 days, and half a million fresh infections in about 2 months.

COVID-related deaths, meanwhile, climbed to 20,379 with 210 new fatalities, the highest announced in nearly 7 weeks or since April 10 when the country logged 225 deaths, the ABS-CBN IRG said.

• READ: No more 'herd immunity'; gov't now eyes 'population protection' vs COVID-19

Most of the additional deaths, or 139, were initially tagged as recovered but were reclassified after the DOH's final validation, the agency said.

Guido said the day's number of new fatalities is the 7th highest announced by the health department in a day.

Meanwhile, there were 4,335 additional recoveries, the lowest in 6 days, bringing the total number of patients who recuperated from the disease to 1,131,942.

The total recoveries account for 94.3 percent of the country's cumulative total.

Out of 47,869 individuals who underwent testing for COVID-19 on Tuesday, 12.5 percent were found positive for the virus.

Twenty-five duplicates, 22 of which are recoveries, have been excluded from the country's cumulative total, the DOH said.

Four cases, 2 of which were recoveries, have also been removed from the running tally after the DOH discovered they tested negative for COVID-19.

Six laboratories failed to submit data on time.

RELATED VIDEO:

Watch more in iWantv or TFC.tv

As of May 25, the country was able to administer 4,495,375 COVID-19 vaccine doses, of which 3,466,314 are first shots.

More than 1 million Filipinos, on the other hand, are already fully-vaccinated against the virus.

• Filipinos fully-vaccinated vs COVID-19 top 1 million- DOH

Based on US-based Johns Hopkins University's tracking, the novel coronavirus has infected 168.4 million people globally and caused almost 3.5 million deaths since it was first reported in Wuhan, China in late 2019.

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