The government's pandemic task force is set to discuss Metro Manila's possible deescalation to Alert Level 2 for the first half of February 2022 and will make the announcement on the weekend.
Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles made the statement following the reported decrease in the number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in the National Capital Region (NCR), which is under Alert Level 3 until the end of the month.
In an interview with CNN Philippines' "The Source" on Wednesday morning, January 26, he said that the Inter-agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Disease will meet on January 27 to discuss the possible easing of restrictions in Metro Manila.
"We have an IATF tomorrow and that will be one of the topics that we will be discussing," he said.
"We'll look at how the numbers will look like in terms of bed utilization rate, the average daily attack rate, and the two-week growth rate," he added.
Nograles said in the case of Metro Manila, there is a decrease in the number of cases that may result in a lower or even a negative growth rate. The task force will then look at the average daily attack rate or the average number of daily cases per 100,000 population.
"Using those two metrics, malalaman mo (we will know) if we are at a critical, high, or moderate level. Right now, the hospital utilization rate is at moderate ," he said.
"Using these three parameters or metrics, we will be able to determine if magde-deescalate ba ang NCR to Alert Level 2 (NCR will deescalate to Alert Level 2)," he added.
However, the acting Palace spokesman said that the announcement will not be made until the weekend.
"We wanna do it in a way that it's closest to February 1," he said.
"What will happen is tomorrow we'll look at the numbers so far, but perhaps we'll have to make a decision as far as Metro Manila is concerned over the weekend because the weekend will be closer to February 1," he added.
"Maybe we'll probably announce over the weekend, either Saturday or Sunday," he continued.
Data from the Department of Health (DOH) showed that as of January 25, Metro Manila's hospital utilization rate is at:
- 44 percent utilized for ICU beds (1,400 total beds)
- 45 percent utilized for isolation beds (5,000 total beds)
- 51 percent utilized for ward beds (4,100 total beds)
- 24 percent utilized for ventilators (1,100 total units)
According to Nograles, it would appear that the region's health system capacity "was adequate enough to withstand this bout with Omicron" and this was due to the high vaccination rate in Metro Manila.
Based on the National COVID-19 Vaccination Dashboard, a total of 9,588,197 individuals from NCR are fully vaccinated as of January 11, 2022.