OCTA sees drop in COVID cases to 300-500 by end of March

FILE PHOTO: Commuters onboard public transport in Metro Manila. Independent analytics group OCTA Research on Thursday, February 24, 2022, says Metro Manila is ready to be placed under COVID-19 Alert Level 1 as the region may only have less than 200 cases a day by the start of March. (INQUIRER /RICHARD A. REYES

MANILA, Philippines — The COVID-19 situation continued to improve even with the easing of quarantine restrictions to the most relaxed alert level 1 in Metro Manila and several other areas across the country, the independent monitor OCTA Research said on Monday.

Even as the rate of decline in new infections has slowed a bit, OCTA fellow Guido David said at the Laging Handa briefing that they expected the downtrend to continue and daily cases could be as low as 300 to 500 by the end of the month.

However, he cautioned that for the numbers to remain low, people must continue to follow minimum public health standards, especially the wearing of face masks.

This was one of the reasons for the decrease in infections in the past month and people should not be complacent as the coronavirus is still here, David pointed out.

Vaccination, including booster shot administration, must continue as well to protect against a possible spike in cases, which could happen when immunity from vaccines wanes, he added.

Weekly case update

The Department of Health on Monday reported 6,297 COVID-19 new cases from March 1 to 7 as the agency shifted to weekly reporting of infections.

Of the new infections, only three or 0.05 percent were severe or critical cases.

According to the new national COVID-19 case bulletin, the daily average was 899 cases, lower by 30 percent compared to infections reported the previous week.

Out of the 3,138 intensive care unit (ICU) beds for COVID-19 patients, 807 or 25.7 percent were occupied, while 24,678 or 18.4 percent of non-ICU beds were in use.

The weekly case bulletin also included the vaccination accomplishment of the government.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III earlier explained that the weekly release of COVID-19 bulletins was meant to boost the confidence of the public under the new normal.

Also on Monday, the United States government delivered its biggest single-day vaccine shipment of 3,999,060 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech to the Philippines as part of its continuing worldwide effort to combat COVID-19.

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