The Covid-19 positivity rate in the Philippines has slightly increased to 2.5 percent but the country’s risk level remains “very low,” the independent research group OCTA said on Tuesday, March 22.
OCTA fellow Dr. Guido David, in an update shared on Twitter, said the country’s positivity rate, or the number of individuals who yielded positive results from among those who were tested for Covid-19, slightly went up to 2.5 percent this week from 2.4 percent during the previous week.
David said that the country’s reproduction number—the average number of secondary infections by each infected individual—was also slightly higher at 0.29 on March 18, from 0.23 on March 11.
“Other sources of analytics indicate a reproduction number of 1.2 in the Philippines,” he added.
However, the OCTA fellow pointed out that the Philippines averaged 491 new cases from March 15 to 21, 2022, decreasing by 14 percent from the previous week’s average of 569 cases.
“The figure on new cases shows a flat, slightly downward trend but not an increasing one,” David said.
“Overall, the Philippines remained under very low-risk but we will continue to monitor possible changes in the trends. Let us continue to follow minimum health protocols,” he said.