Hike comes amid move to make face mask optional
WITH the impending lifting of the face mask mandate in the country, the National Capital Region (NCR) or Metro Manila is seeing a slow rise in coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases.
This is according to the independent OCTA Research group.
“NCR is having a slow uptick in COVID-19 cases,” OCTA fellow Guido David said yesterday in a social media post.
However, David said, it is not surprising “given the increased mobility of the population.”
OCTA said one-week growth rate in the NCR stood at 6 percent (September 4 to 10), from -17 percent (August 28 to September 3).
Reproduction number increased to 1.11 as of September 7, from 0.93 as of August 31.
“The reproduction number has increased to greater than 1, which means infections are increasing,” said David.
Numbers also showed the positivity rate grew to 13.3 percent as of September 9, from 12.1 percent as of September 2.
Despite the uptick, COVID-19 beds and ICU occupancy rates remained low, OCTA said.
Hospital bed occupancy in the NCR stands at 34.5 percent, while 28.9 percent of the ICU beds are occupied.
Last month, COVID-19 cases in Metro Manila started declining after a surge due to the Omicron subvariant BA.5. Since then, more areas in the country have been placed under Alert Level 1.
School Year 2022-23 also opened in late August marked by the return of face-to-face classes.
Last week, the Department of Health announced that the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) has recommended to President Marcos Jr. the optional or voluntary wearing of face masks outdoors nationwide.
Subsequently, the DOH said it pushed to continue the masking mandate as making it optional outdoors for low-risk settings and low-risk individuals may cause an increase in cases.
