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Manila Bulletin devider Philippines devider National devider OCTA: Too early to say if NCR+ bubble working

OCTA: Too early to say if NCR+ bubble working

Published Mar 25, 2021 02:41 pm

OCTA Research fellow Dr. Guido David said the government should put more restrictions if the reproduction rate of COVID-19 cases will not decrease despite the imposition of a bubble setup in Metro Manila and other areas.

(ALI VICOY / MANILA BULLETIN)

The government has placed the National Capital Region (NCR) and the provinces of Rizal, Bulacan, Cavite, and Laguna under stricter general community quarantine status called as NCR Plus (NCR+) bubble from March 22 to April 4 to curb the rising number of COVID-19 cases.

“After April 4, if we’re not seeing the numbers go down yet and we open up again, it’s gonna go back to the way things were last week or two weeks ago,” David said in an interview with CNN Philippines.

“If the numbers are not decreasing fast enough, we may even need to impose additional restrictions,” he added.

Based on OCTA’s projection last week, the daily COVID-19 cases in the country could reach up to 10,000 cases per day by the end of March.

“Hopefully we will not reach those numbers because of the imposed NCR Plus bubble,” he said.

The research fellow said it is still “too early” to say if the bubble is working as the reproduction number or the number of people that a COVID-19 positive individual can infect in NCR is still around 2.

“Our position is that we should give it a chance. We would like to see what the changes in the trends are. For example, the decrease in the reproduction number, we are hoping to see that,” David said.

“If it decreases after two weeks to around 1.5, that means we are probably on track for a decrease if we extended further,” he added.

On Thursday, OCTA reported that the reproduction number of COVID-19 in Metro Manila dropped to 1.91 from 1.99, as of March 24.

But the group noted that it is still too early to tell if the decrease in the reproduction rate is the start of a downward trend in the spread of infection in the metropolis. 

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