The Department of Health (DOH) on Wednesday said additional COVID-19 cases in the Philippines has reached another record high at 2,539.

The DOH said it also crossed the 50,000 mark with 50,359 total confirmed cases since the outbreak started.

Of the additional cases, 1,922 are considered “fresh cases” and 617 are considered “late cases.” This is the highest number of fresh cases reported in a single day.

Fresh cases refer to those whose test results were released within the last 3 days, while late cases are those whose results were released four days ago or earlier.

Of the fresh cases, 883 are from the National Capital Region, 369 are from Region 7 or Central Visayas and 670 are tagged as “Others.” Others may refer to cases from outside Metro Manila and those without location data.

Of the late cases, 183 are from NCR, 74 from Region 7, and 360 tagged as others.

While NCR is still the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in the country, Region 7’s Cebu province and Cebu City have been identified as hotspots. Because of this, Cebu City remains under a strict enhanced community quarantine.

The DOH has attributed the recent spike in cases, especially those from NCR, to the easing of the quarantine restrictions.

The DOH also reported 202 new recovered patients or a total of 12,588 recoveries.

There are also 5 new COVID-related deaths or a total of 1,314 fatalities since the start of the pandemic.

This brings the total number of active cases to 36,457.

Worldwide, there have been 11.85 million people who have been infected with COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus dashboard. Of those, almost 6.5 million have already recovered and almost 545,000 have died./Stacy Ang