Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 18) — The OCTA Research group is concerned that the modified enhanced community quarantine raised over Metro Manila and nearby provinces is not working as well as it should.
“We want to wait a few more days before we make recommendations because we might be reacting too early saying that MECQ is not working. It’s working to an extent but maybe not working as well as it should, pero [but] we will see the trend within a few days,” said Professor Guido David of OCTA Research.
“Baka naman there are still cases and backlogs in previous weeks. That’s just a possibility kaya nagkaroon ng increase [that’s why there was an increase],” he added.
According to David, when NCR, Rizal, Laguna, Bulacan, and Cavite were placed under enhanced community quarantine, the rate of infection decreased by 20%.
But since being placed under MECQ, a growth rate of 3% was observed.
“Ngayon after one week of MECQ, the cases actually started to increase in NCR. Ngayon it’s at 4,800 from 4,618, so it increased by 3%,” said David.
[Translation: Now after one week of MECQ, the cases actually started to increase in NCR. Now it’s at 4,800 from 4,618, so it increased by 3%.]
If the uptick in cases continues, David suggested the government should consider placing areas with a growing rate of infection under tighter restrictions.
“If it’s not working as well as it should be, we can consider several options. We can increase certain restrictions. Kung ano ‘yun [whatever that is], it has to be discussed in detail kasi maraming restrictions ang na-ease [because a lot of restrictions were eased] during the move from ECQ to MECQ,” says David.
David also clarified the discrepancy between the case fatality rate provided by the OCTA Research group and the Department of Health.
As of April 15, the department reported a CFR of 1.46% while OCTA reported a 5.36% CFR during the same date.
According to David, this is because they use a different formula from that of the DOH.
“In OCTA, we don’t count active cases doon sa [in the] computation. Why? Because that formula is provided by the WHO. What that means is we divide deaths with the number of result cases,” says David. “We looked at data from March 28 until April 16 so it’s a very short-term data. It might be subject to inaccuracies because we are looking at short term.”
The DOH said it intends to meet with the OCTA Research group to discuss their different computations of the CFR.
