The Philippines tallied 32,744 new COVID cases on Friday as four areas were placed under Alert Level 4 or one notch below a lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Infections driven by the hyper-contagious omicron variant are rising in the provinces while in Metro Manila, the surge has begun to show signs of slowing down, authorities said.
The day's tally brought total active cases to 291,618. The Department of Health also reported 156 new deaths and 16,385 recoveries.
In total, the Philippines reported a total of 3,357,083 cases and 53,309 deaths since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
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