Metro Manila ICU occupancy for COVID-19 cases still high -- OCTA

The rate of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infections in Metro Manila continues to slow down but the utilization of intensive care units (ICUs) for COVID-19 cases remain high, independent research group OCTA said on Friday, Oct. 1.
From Sept. 24 to 30, Metro Manila averaged 3,711 new cases, which is 17 percent lower than the previous week, OCTA Research fellow Dr. Guido David said in a tweet.
Moreover, he said that Metro Manila’s reproduction number, or the average number of secondary infections by each infected individual, has decreased further to 0.84 from 0.98 a week ago.
Its seven-day average positivity rate was also down to 17 percent. This number means that nearly two in 10 people tested turned out positive for COVID-19.
However, David pointed out that ICU occupancy in Metro Manila remained at a high level of above 70 percent.
The Department of Health on Thursday reported 14,286 additional COVID-19 cases in the country.
Of these, 3,239 cases were from Metro Manila.
In OCTA’s monitoring report released on Thursday, the group has classified Metro Manila as “high risk” for COVID-19 infections but the region’s risk level could be downgraded to “moderate risk” within the week.
OCTA Research assesses the risk level of an area using the indicators of the Covid Act Now developed by the Harvard Global Health Institute, Apple, Microsoft, and Bloomberg.
Four indicators are used to determine the COVID risk of an area, which include incidence based on the local government unit's (LGU) most current reproduction number; incidence based on the most recent seven-day average of new cases per 100,000 population, also called average daily attack rate; hospital ICU utilization rate (ICUUR); and testing which refers to the most recent seven-day average of the test positivity rate.