Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 30) — The COVID-19 situation in the National Capital Region could go down to moderate risk by late October or November, and low risk by December, OCTA Research said on Thursday.
OCTA research fellow and mathematics professor Guido David said recent COVID-19 case trends show improvements in Metro Manila.
“We are projecting NCR to be as possibly moderate risk in about one week. So malapit na madowngrade ang NCR [It will soon be downgraded] based on the metrics that we are looking at,” he said in an interview with health reporters.
The reproduction rate, or the number of people that an infected person might transfer the virus to, already dropped to 0.87. A reproduction rate below 1 could mean a slowing down in the transmission.
The seven-day average of new cases hit below 4,000-mark, with 3,891 cases reported from September 23 to 29. It last reached this level between August 16 to 22, at 3,881 average daily cases.
“Most of the local governments are already at less than 0.9 in reproduction number… It’s clearly decreasing. It indicates situations are improving. This is good news for people around Metro Manila area,” David said.
OCTA also projected a further decrease in the number of people for every 100,000 population who gets the virus on a daily basis or ADAR, and the number of people testing positive for COVID-19. But he said the situation in intensive care units may take longer to improve.
“ICU might take some time before ma-downgrade to moderate,” the researcher said.
[Translation: The ICU capacity might take some time before it gets downgraded to moderate.]
The Department of Health earlier said it has yet to check if the number of people testing positive is really going down or if it was affected by lower number of tests conducted daily this September. They have yet to factor the antigen tests into the official tally.
But David said the trend is clear: New infections are indeed going down.
“Positivity rate is decreasing. Last week it was 21% in NCR, now 18% — this is a 7-day average. Medyo mabilis siyang bumaba ang positivity rate [It’s going down quickly]. It means even if we have lower testing, if the positivity rate is decreasing that’s a sign the trend is lowering because the density of positive cases is also decreasing,” he said.
