The decision on whether or not the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) alert level in Metro Manila would be raised is yet to be discussed by the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-MEID), Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Eduardo Año said on Sunday, Jan. 9.

This, as calls for stricter measures escalate due to exponential growth of COVID-cases in the country. On Saturday, the Department of Health reported more than 26,000 new COVID cases.

“This will be discussed in the next IATF meeting,’’ Año said in a message.

OCTA Research reported that the COVID-19 average daily attack rate (ADAR) was at the highest in the National Capital Region (NCR) and Cainta, Rizal in the past week with 59.81 percent and 55.37 percent ratings respectively.

In a GMA News report, OCTA Research fellow Dr. Guido David stated that Metro Manila has the most COVID-19 infection cases from Jan. 2 to 8 with an average of 8,468 new cases.

This was a 785 percent week-long increase rate as compared to its previous average of 957 new cases from Dec. 26, 2021 to Jan. 1 this year.

Despite the staggering COVID-19 increase rate, Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion insisted that there is no need to upgrade the quarantine status in Metro Manila stressing that people are expected to remain indoors after the Holiday season.

“The first quarter of the year is a weak and slow quarter since many have spent the money with Christmas gifts and New Year gatherings. This is the quarter where we see slow sales for most businesses,” Concepcion said in a statement.

In the same report, Concepcion noted that even if NCR was not placed under alert level 3 “mobility will really drop and on top of that (COVID-19) surge, nobody will go out so there is no need to place it under alert level 4.”

He added: "People are generally scared to go out now because of the increase in cases and they have already spent their money during the holidays last month.’’

Concepcion’s stand runs contrary to the recommendation of infectious disease expert Dr. Rontgene Solante of raising the high-risk areas in the country to alert level 4 with the recent COVID-19 surge and threat of the omicron variant.

“We know that the escalation to a higher alert level will always be dictated by the number of cases. With the hospital facilities now, shortage of healthcare workers, and most of those patients with high transmissibility in the community, in my opinion, we need a higher alert level than what we have now,’’ Solante said in a Jan 8 public briefing.

Solante emphasized that the transmission of the omicron variant in the communities is in progress adding that “wWith the enormous number of people being (COVID-19) positive within just a short duration of time and most of them are manifesting with upper respiratory tract symptoms, then I would say there is already a community transmission of omicron variant.’’

Citing experts, Solante said the omicron variant could be three to five times highly communicable compared to the delta variant due to heavy mutations.

In one of the previous IATF meetings, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III floated the idea of upgrading the quarantine status in NCR to alert level 4 as COVID-19 cases continue to surge. (Chito A. Chavez)