The national government will consider the recommendation of the Metro Manila Council (MMC) to retain the Alert Level 2 status in the National Capital Region (NCR) until the end of February despite the continuous decline of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases.

Sec. Carlito Galvez Jr., vaccine czar and chief implementer of the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19, said the new alert level status in Metro Manila will be decided in a meeting between President Duterte and the pandemic task force on Monday night, Feb. 14.

The NCR is currently placed under Alert Level 2 until Feb. 15.

“Kung ang recommendation ng Metro Manila is Alert Level 2, normally ang ginagawa natin kasi, sila ang nakakaalam sa baba. Tama po ‘yong sinasabi ni Mayor na talagang dahan-dahan at tignan natin ang metrics (If the recommendation of the Metro Manila is Alert Level 2, normally they are the ones who know the situation on the ground. What the mayor said is true that we need to re-open slowly and we need to look at the metrics),” Galvez said during the nationwide rollout of the pediatric vaccination for children aged five to 11 at the Solaire Theater in Paranaque City.

During the event, Olivarez announced that the MMC unanimously passed a resolution which recommends to retain Alert Level in NCR “until end of the month.”

Olivarez explained that the Council considered that health care utilization in NCR as well as the vaccination program for the five to 11 year old kids.

According to the Department of Health (DOH), the NCR still accounts for 32 percent of the overall confirmed cases nationwide where only five local government units (LGUs) have achieved a low-risk classification.

The DOH said that the hospital care utilization rate and COVID-dedicated bed utilization rate in NCR were also decreasing at 27 percent, while the positivity rate was also down to 8.5 percent.

“Dahan-dahan, ang tingin po naming mga mayors pati ang LGUs with the recommendation ng aming CHOs , isustain muna natin itong Alert Level 2 until end of the month (Let’s do it slowly, and we, the mayors and LGUs along with the recommendation of CHOs, think that there is a need to sustain Alert Level 2 until the end of the month),” Olivarez said.

Galvez assured that Duterte will carefully study all the recommendations from the MMC and other stakeholders such as the private sector whether to retain Alert Level 2 in NCR or deescalate to Alert Level 1.

“I don’t want to preempt ‘yong meeting namin mamaya kasi pag-uusapan namin ‘yan (because we will talk about it later). Titignan po namin ‘yong (We will look at the) thresholds. Just in case kailangan i-uphold namin ‘yong recommendation ng (we need to uphold the recommendation of the) MMC, we will do that,” Galvez said.

Once the new alert levels in NCR and other regions are decided, it will take effect from Feb. 16 to 28.