OCTA Research Fellow Fr. Nicanor Austriaco said Wednesday, Jan. 5, that the public should not be scared of the high coronavirus disease (COVID-19) case numbers as most of these are expected to be mild.

"A lot of people are worried and scared. We should expect this but this is a good sign because if it goes up very quickly, and it finds all the food it can find it will also rapidly decelerate," he said during a Go Negosyo town hall meeting.

While most of the cases will be mild, he added that fewer hospitalizations and death should also be expected. Data shared by OCTA from the Department of Health (DOH) also showed that only 0.05 percent of new COVID-19 cases are moderate, severe, and critical.

Over the past six days from Dec. 29, 2021 to Jan. 3, of the 16,438 active cases in the National Capital Region (NCR), 97.51 percent were diagnosed as mild while 2.44 percent were asymptomatic and 0.05 percent or 8 cases were moderate, severe, or critical.

"Despite the low number of moderate, severe, and critical cases, hospital bed occupancy for COVID-19 increased from 19 percent or 34 percent in a span of seven days," OCTA Research Fellow Dr. Guido David said.

Austriaco said that he also observed this striking comparison between the American experience and the Filipino experience. He stated that Filipinos will go to the hospital for anything and they expect to stay there for a long period of time.

He added that the public should change its mindset for Omicron that if they become sick, they should stay at home and consult doctors remotely especially if they are vaccinated and boosted because the chances of us developing severe COVID is "quite light".

"We should expect significant population protection after the Omicron wave passes. So once the Omicron wave passes, it should basically booster everybody who it infects and it should vaccinate everyone who was not vaccinated before," he said.