The Department of Health (DOH) on Monday, Sept. 27, reported 18,449 new cases of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
This brought the total number of COVID cases in the country to 2,509,177.
The case bulletin of the DOH also showed 21,811 new recoveries and 93 new deaths.
Total recoveries rose to 2,313,412 while total deaths climbed to 37,494.
The DOH said of the 18,449 reported cases 17,953 (97 percent) occurred within the recent 14 days (Sept. 14 - 27, 2021).
The top regions with cases in the recent two weeks were the National Capital Region (3,060 or 17%), Region 4-A (2,465 or 14 percent) and Region 3 (1,922 or 11 percent).
The Health department said 130 duplicates were removed from the total case count as 61 of these were recoveries and 4 deaths.
"Moreover, 227 cases previously tagged as recoveries have been validated to be active cases and 117 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation," the DOH said.
The Health department said all labs were operational on Sept. 25, 2021 while two labs were not able to submit their data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System (CDRS).
It added that based on data in the last 14 days, the two non-reporting labs contribute, on average, 0.07 percent of samples tested and 0.04 percent of positive individuals.