(CNN Philippines) Metro Manila — The country’s COVID-19 death toll exceeded 21,000 after 46 more people lost their lives to the disease, the Department of Health reported on Tuesday.

The death toll rose to 21,012, which is 1.7% of total cases. Tuesday’s death count is the first time in a week that there were less than a hundred fatalities recorded in a day, but the DOH clarified that ten laboratories were not able to submit their reports on time.

The case tally stood at 1,235,467 with 5,177 new infections. Of this total, 53,203 are active or currently sick patients, making up 4.3% of the cases.

At least 93.1% of the active cases are experiencing mild symptoms, 2.3% without symptoms, 1.8% with severe symptoms, 1.4% in critical condition and 1.3% in moderate condition.

The recovery count is at 1,161,252 or 94% of the case tally after 6,230 more people were cleared of the coronavirus.

The agency added that the ten laboratories excluded from the total contributed an average of 4.3% of samples tested and 6.6% of positive individuals in the past 14 days.

Fifteen of the newly reported deaths were mistakenly tagged as survivors previously and added after validation. The DOH also deleted 11 duplicate cases, including eight survivors.

The daily positivity rate or percentage of patients that tested positive, slightly dropped to 11.7% based on 36,978 tests done as of May 30. The figure is still more than double the ideal rate of below 5% by the World Health Organization. Experts said high rates may mean high transmission.

Among Filipinos abroad, 11 morecases were detected as well as 16 additional recoveries and 14 fatalities, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs. The total number of infected is now 19,765 with 4,499 cases verified by the DOH. There are 12,037 survivors in total and 1,194 deaths with 6,534 active patients.

The national government recently retained the general community quarantine or GCQ status in Metro Manila, Laguna, Rizal, Cavite and Bulacan – also known as NCR Plus – with leeway for travel to modified GCQ areas.

The Department of Health said that although NCR Plus saw a downward trend in infections, the rate of decline has been slowing which meant it was too soon to ease restrictions.