Department of Health Secretary Francisco Duque III (File photo)
MANILA – Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said coronavirus cases in the National Capital Region (NCR) may have already reached their peak as the number of new infections in the area continue to decrease in the past few days.
“Lumiliit ang porsiyentong iniaambag nito sa ating total case load (The percentage of new cases the NCR contributes to our total case load is getting smaller),” Duque said during a televised public briefing.
On Sunday, the NCR logged 5,433 new cases, lower than Saturday’s 6,646. It recorded 7,279 on January 21; 9,455 on January 20; and 8,376 on January 19.
The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases will discuss on Thursday the alert levels raised in different parts of the country.
Duque said they might talk about de-escalating the alert level in NCR from 3 to 2 following the task force’s review of the metrics.
“So, depende pa rin iyan kung ang ating pamantayan o ang ating batayan ay ang two-week growth rate natin, dapat sa (that depends on our metrics or if our basis is the two-week growth rate, it should be) moderate risk level which means zero to 200 percent growth rate for two weeks, current two weeks compared to the previous two weeks,” Duque said.
He added that the average daily attack rate is between one to seven cases per one hundred thousand individuals.
The healthcare utilization rate must be maintained at low-risk classification or less than 50 percent total bed utilization rate and intensive care unit utilization rate, he added.
“Baka kailangan na kailangan ay tingnan na rin kung talaga namang malinaw na ang health care utilization rate ay nagkaroon na ng pagbabaklas ‘no, iyong decoupling (We might really need to look at the healthcare utilization rate if it went down, the decoupling),” he said.
Decoupling is a situation where cases are increasing but they do not translate to a large number of severe and critical cases.
“Baka pag-usapan iyan na puwede na, na magbaba (There might be a discussion about it, to de-escalate) to Alert Level 2, Duque said.
He said the NCR’s current bed utilization rate is 41.81 percent, or low risk while its intensive care unit utilization rate is 47 percent which is also considered low risk. (PNA)
