Nine local government units (LGUs) in the country have been identified by the OCTA Research Group as "high-risk" for COVID-19 infections due to an increased number of cases per day and an alarming hospital occupancy rate in the past weeks.
Based on the group's latest monitoring report released on Wednesday, the high-risk areas in Luzon are Makati City, Malabon City, Baguio City, the towns of Itogon and Tuba in Benguet, and Lucena City in Quezon.
In the Visayas and Mindanao, identified as high-risk areas were Iloilo City in Iloilo, Catarman in Northern Samar, and Pagadian City in Zamboanga Del Sur.
"We are concerned that these LGUs may experience high hospital burden in the coming weeks that may stress their health care systems and overwhelm their medical frontliners," OCTA said in its report.
According to OCTA, these LGUs were listed as areas of concern due to the high number of cases recorded daily, high COVID-19 attack rate, and the high hospital occupancy in their communities.
The attack rate, OCTA explained, is the number of new cases per day relative to population. For example, a daily attack rate of 5 percent per 1,000 means that there are five new cases per 100,000 of the population.
"A higher attack rate means more people are getting infected," it added.
To reverse the increase in transmission in their communities, the research team urged the identified high-risk LGUs to further intensify their efforts at testing, tracing, and isolation.
The implementation of more aggressive and effective localized lockdowns with stricter border controls is also urgently needed to suppress further viral transmissions in the high-risk LGUs, the group said.
In its October 25 to 31 monitoring report, the OCTA noted that there is still a continuous downward trend in the number of new cases in the country even with the resumption of the Philippine Red Cross testing.
OCTA added that the positivity rate in the capital region, or the share of tests that come back positive, also continues to "trend in the right direction" at 6 percent, which is now close to the World Health Organization target of 5 percent.
The reproduction number in the country, while it has slightly increased at 0.86, is still below 1, meaning that local transmissions are being controlled.
However, the team reiterated that these positive downward trends can "easily be reversed" if the government, the private sector, and the public become less vigilant and complacent in the fight against COVID-19.
Sustaining these positive trends, OCTA said, will require more significant cooperation, collaboration, and vigilance from all sectors of society.
"We urge the national and the local governments to strictly monitor and enforce compliance with minimum health standards such as physical distancing, the wearing of face masks and face shields, and proper hygiene to reverse the increase in transmissions at the community level," it added.
The OCTA team is an independent and interdisciplinary research group that has been studying the COVID-19 outbreak in the Philippines. It is composed primarily of UP faculty members and alumni with contributors from the University of Santo Tomas and Providence College, USA.