Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said on Monday, Jan. 24 that the National Capital Region (NCR) is ready in case it will shift to a more relaxed classification of Alert Level 2 by February.
"Oo, handa naman ang Metro Manila," Duque said during a Laging Handa press briefing.
"Unang-una maganda naman ang ating vaccination coverage. So, maganda ang tiwala o ang confidence na maaayos natin ‘yung pagsunod sa minimum public health standards (First of all, our vaccination coverage is good. So there confidence that we can properly implement minimum public health standards)," he added.
He emphasized that that there are two ways to respond to the pandemic: a high vaccination coverage – which has been achieved in Metro Manila; and compliance to minimum public health standards
While Duque aired its possibility, he mentioned that "it is not yet cast in stone" as it will still be discussed with the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF).
One of the factors the Department of Health (DOH) and the IATF looks at when deciding to de-escalate according to Duque is the two-week growth rate. He said that it should be at the moderate risk level which means the current growth rate should be between 0 to 200 percent compared to the previous two weeks.
He added that the average daily attack rate should be between one to seven average cases per 100,000 population.
Lastly, healthcare utilization rate such as the total bed utilization and the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) utilization rate should be at low risk classification, or 49 percent and below.
Duque said that once these are met, Metro Manila can automatically return to Alert Level 2.