Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 10) — OCTA Research fellow Guido David on Monday said the positivity rate in Metro Manila is now at an alarming 52%, but he said there are early indicators the situation could soon improve in the capital region.
He said the independent monitoring group is seeing early signs that the extremely high number of tested individuals getting a positive COVID-19 result could mean cases in Metro Manila are “close to the peak,” but David stressed the course could still change.
“There is hope that the positivity rate is already stalling or in other words, it might be close to the peak. If that happens, of course, that would be great. If it starts to peak, we may already start to see a downward trend next week,” he told CNN Philippines. “But this is all preliminary. It is still early to say if it is already peaking.”
If the initial projection does not happen, OCTA said the country may breach the 40,000 cases daily towards the end of the week or next week. Once that happens, the country will have a hard time seeing the true COVID-19 situation since the Philippines can currently only conduct 70,000 RT-PCR tests per day.
“Definitely, if we hit 40,000 to 50,000, this would be close to the worst case because after that, we would be losing visibility already … We won’t even see 100,000 cases because we’re only testing about 70,000,” the OCTA fellow said.
David also flagged that areas outside the National Capital Region are starting to see a surge with increasing positivity rate and reproduction number.
The government on Sunday vowed RT-PCR testing capacity will be increased in NCR Plus by ensuring all laboratories are operational seven days a week.
The country registered 28,707 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, the highest since the pandemic hit in 2020.
