Manila, Jul 28 (IANS): The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported on Wednesday 4,478 new Covid-19 infections, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 1,566,667.

The death toll climbed to 27,401 after 84 more patients died from the viral disease, the DOH added.

The Philippines, which has around 110 million population, has tested more than 15 million people since the outbreak in January 2020, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The Covid-19 cases in 11 areas in Metro Manila, home to over 13 million people, have increased, the DOH said, adding it is closely monitoring the virus clusters in these areas with "positive two-week growth rates."

The DOH said that Metro Manila "is showing a 19 per cent increase in cases. "(The 11 areas) all have positive two-week growth rate - a trend reversal from a negative two-week growth rate three to four weeks ago," it added.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque stressed the need to continue strengthening the local health system capacities and further augmenting the needed resources.

"We need to make sure that we have enough capacity to cope with the demand (if) cases continue their upward trend," Duque said in a statement.

"We acknowledge that there is an increase of our case metrics," Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said, stressing the need to contain the spread of the virus amid the emergence of the highly infectious variants.

"Otherwise, we might see a daily active case in Metro Manila to reach 11,000 by the end of September based on the projections with the assumption that the Delta variant is 60 percent more transmissible, a conservative estimate of how fast the Delta variant will spread," Vergeire added.

The Philippines has been in varying lockdown restrictions since March last year.