Contrary to the claim of a research firm, the Department of Health (DOH) said it has not recorded any increase in the Covid-19 positivity rate of the country.

On Tuesday, March 22, OCTA Research fellow Dr. Guido David said the country’s “positivity rate was up slightly to 2.5 percent.” Previously, it was 2.4 percent.

David also said “reproduction number increased slightly to 0.29.”

DOH Spokesperson Maria Rosario S. Vergeire said the agency did not monitor any rise in the Covid-19 positivity rate.

“We are not seeing any increase in our positivity rate, instead, what we are seeing is the decrease in our positivity rate,” she said during a virtual press briefing.

She noted that “even in NCR, for our previous week, it was a 2.8 positivity rate, now it is down to 2.6 percent for this week.”

Per Vergeire, it is possible that the research firm’s way of measuring the Covid-19 positivity rate is not similar with DOH.

“We measure our positivity rate by week, we don't measure it by day because there are a lot of factors that may affect the computation of a daily positivity rate, which can bias ito pong nakukuha niyong resulta (the result you got). And can affect decision and policy-making, kaya kami po weekly ang ginagamit naming positivity rate,” agency’s spokesperson explained.

In David’s post on Twitter, he said that despite the slight increase observed by OCTA, the country is still under the “very low risk” classification.

Despite this, he called on the public not to be complacent and always observe minimum health and safety protocols in order to stay safe amid the lingering pandemic,

From March 14 to 20, the DOH said the country logged a total of 3,572 confirmed cases of Covid-19.

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