OCTA sees 'very low risk' COVID-19 situation in Metro Manila by March

Metro Manila's coronavirus disease (COVID-19) risk level could further go down to "very low" by March, the OCTA Research Group said on Friday, Feb. 11.
"The magic number to achieve very low-risk classification is 140 new cases per day, which seems possible by March. The NCR achieved very low-risk classification in December 2021 before the Omicron ," OCTA fellow Dr. Guido David said in a tweet.
"Since February 8, the NCR has been averaging just 600 new COVID-19 cases per day. With daily numbers beating the January 20 projections, we now look at the revised January 24 projections, which have been close to actuals over the past few days. The projections show a decrease to less than 200 new cases per day by end of February," he pointed out.
As of Friday, Metro Manila's COVID reproduction number has decreased to 0.23, which means virus transmission has slowed down.
Meanwhile, the region's average daily attack rate or incidence rate has dropped to 6.55 cases per 100,000 people.
The positivity rate, or the number of individuals who yielded positive results from among those who were tested for COVID-19, has also declined to 8.8 percent.
Moreover, healthcare and ICU utilization rates have improved to 28.6 percent and 30.8 percent respectively.
David continued to advise the public to comply with the minimum public health protocols to achieve a lower number of COVID-19 cases.