But 20K daily cases in PH seen in next 2 weeks
WHILE the number of new COVID-19 cases in Metro Manila continues to increase, the rise is slowing down, the OCTA Research group said yesterday.
The growth rate in Metro Manila (National Capital Region), the epicenter of the pandemic, also decreased, said the group which monitors the country’s COVID situation.
These were based on OCTA’s latest monitoring report covering August 15 to 20, the end of the two-week enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) imposed in the NCR.
OCTA said the imposition of the ECQ “helped reduce the growth rate of new COVID-19 cases.”
But it said the current rate of decrease in the reproduction number is slower than the one seen in April.
“One possible explanation for this is the presence of the highly transmissible Delta variant.
Another possible explanation is the higher mobility reported by the DOH during the recent ECQ,” it said.
While the situation in Metro Manila is improving, OCTA fellow Guido David said the record-high of over 17,200 cases in a single day — which was reported last Friday — will still be surpassed.
“Seeing 20,000 new cases in a day is very possible to reach within the next two weeks. The 17,000 cases is, unfortunately, not yet the peak. We will surpass that. It is almost sure already,” said David.
He said this is because the reproduction rate in the country “is still high at 1.45.”
“This means that cases are still growing in the whole country,” he said.
The Department of Health yesterday reported 16,044 new COVID-19 cases nationwide, the second day in a row of over 16,000 new infections.
Six laboratories were unable to submit their data to the COVID-19 Document Repository System last August 20.
There are now about 1.84 million cases nationwide.
OCTA, in its latest monitoring report, said while cases are still on an upswing, the growth rate has been going down in the past weeks.
“In other words, the surge has slowed down in the NCR,” it said.
The group said the NCR averaged 3,819 new COVID-19 cases daily in the past seven days (August 15 to 21), which is 24 percent higher than the previous seven-day average (August 8 to 14) of 3,088 daily new cases.
Just two weeks ago, the one-week growth rate was at 48 percent, while the growth rate was 72 percent, three weeks ago, it also said.
OCTA said the current reproduction number in the NCR is at 1.67, lower than that seven days earlier which was 1.90.
The DOH reported 215 new deaths among COVID-19 patients, bringing the total to 31,810 and 13,952 newly recovered patient or a total of 1,681,925 COVID-19 survivors.
There are still 125,900 active COVID-19 cases, or 6.8 percent of the total infections.
