A fellow of the OCTA Research Group on Monday, March 7, said the decline in new Covid-19 cases in the country has slowed down but that cases could still drop to around 300 to 500 per day by the end of the month.
"Patuloy pa rin nating nakikita na bumababa iyong bilang ng kaso. Medyo nag-slow down iyong pagbaba nila pero bumababa pa rin (We continue to see that the number of cases is decreasing. The decrease has slowed down a bit but it is still decreasing)," OCTA fellow Dr. Guido David said in a televised briefing.
"By end of March, posibleng baka mga few hundreds na lang iyan, baka 300 to 500, tulad ng nakita natin noong December last year bago pumasok iyong Omicron (it's possible that cases will only be a few hundreds, maybe 300 to 500, just like what we saw in December 2021, before the Omicron variant entered the country)," he said.
David noted that there are times that the slowing down of decrease in cases could signal a reversal of the trend.
"Pero sa ngayon, wala pa naman tayong nakikitang reversal of trend, pababa pa rin naman pero bumagal lang iyong pagbaba so it means medyo nagpa-plateau nang kaunti ang mga numbers pero hopefully makita pa rin natin iyan tuloy-tuloy (But so far, we haven't seen a reversal of trend. It's still going down but the decline has slowed down so it means the numbers have plateaued a bit but hopefully we can still see the number of cases going down continuously)," he said.
David said one of the factors that may have caused the slowing down of the rate of decrease was the case backlogs.
"Iyong mga late cases na nadadagdag so hindi natin nakikita iyong tunay na larawan kung ito ba iyong mga fresh cases or mostly may mga backlog lang dito kaya rin bumabagal iyong rate of decrease (There could be late cases that are added so we don't see the real picture, if they are fresh cases or just backlogs causing the slowing down of rate of decrease)," David explained.
"Para maipagpatuloy natin iyong pagbaba ng bilang ng kaso, kailangan pa ring sumunod tayo sa minimum public health standards. Iyan iyong isa sa mga rason kung bakit mabilis na bumababa iyong bilang ng kaso natin noong mga nakaraang buwan at linggo (In order for us to continue to see a decline in the number of cases, we still need to comply with minimum public health standards. That's one of the reasons why the number of our cases has been declining rapidly in recent months and weeks)," he reiterated.