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UP experts project 150k COVID-19 cases by end of August


Experts from the University of the Philippines (UP) said Friday the number of COVID-19 cases in the country may reach 150,000 by the end of August.

Almost double the current national case total, the projection reflects the "exponential growth" experts have talked about, Professor Ranjit Rye of the UP OCTA research team said in an interview on Dobol B sa News TV.

In their 13th forecast report dated July 31, the research team said the number of cases could reach 150,000 with 3,000 deaths by August 31, assuming that government response efforts "will continue to be implemented strictly and effectively."

A "less effective" implementation of the general community quarantine (GCQ) may lead to an additional 20,000 cases or more, they said.

As of Thursday, the national case total was 89,374. Of this number, there are 22,327 active cases after the Department of Health reported a record 38,075 recoveries in one day. Nearly 2,000 patients have died.

Rye said the team recommended to President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday to either reinstate the modified enhanced community quarantine in Metro Manila or retain the GCQ, with enhanced localized lockdowns and enhanced testing, tracing, and isolation.

Metro Manila, Bulacan, Batangas, Cavite, Laguna, Rizal, Cebu City, Lapu-Lapu City, Mandaue City, Minglanilla and Consolacion towns in Cebu province, and Zamboanga City will be under GCQ from August 1 to 15.

The rest of the Philippines will be under modified GCQ.

While the virus' reproduction number, or the number of people an infected person could pass the virus to, in Metro Manila has decreased from 1.75 to between 1.3 and 1.4, Rye said this is still a high value.

"Mataas pa rin po kasi siya...[dapat] below one," he said in the radio interview.

In previous report, the UP OCTA team said that to flatten the curve, the reproduction number should be less than one. A value higher than one indicates the pandemic is spreading.

The new report states however that the current reproduction number of 1.4 is "a significant reduction" from 1.75.

"More importantly, the trend for the country is on the decline. We believe that this is a positive development," the report states.

Epicenters

The researchers identified the National Capital Region, Cebu, and Calabarzon as the epicenters of the pandemic in the country.

In Cebu, the virus' reproduction number has fallen to less than one — 0.8 or 0.9, according to Professor Guido David, who is also part of the OCTA research team.

He said this means Cebu has flattened the curve but that this is not a reason to disregard health standards.

The researchers said in the report that the province still logs over 200 new cases daily.

They said that “this needs to be reduced to less than 100 new cases per day” to achieve the target positivity rate of 5% or below, according to the benchmarks set by the World Health Organization.

They said current transmission rates in Cebu project to between 20,000 to 25,000 cases by the end of August. 

In Metro Manila, which accounts for over 60% of all cases in the Philippines, the researchers said the surge in cases "has not yet peaked." The positivity rate remains "high" at 15%, they said.

Though the number of deaths remains low, the researchers said there could be a delay in the rise of deaths as observed in Cebu, where the death toll increased "several weeks" after the surge in daily cases.

"Tragically, we anticipate that the number of daily deaths in NCR will increase in the next several weeks as a result of the current surge in daily cases," the research team said.

The hospitalization rate in the NCR also continues to escalate, they said, noting that hospital bed and ICU bed occupancy in the region has breached the "critical" level of 70%.

If current trends continue, the researchers said this projects to 90,000 to 100,000 cases in Metro Manila by the end of August. If the quarantine is relaxed, the projection is at least 120,000 cases by the same time.

The researchers also urged the government to “seriously rethink” its strategies on the repatriation of overseas Filipinos and locally stranded individuals (LSIs).

“We urge the government to shorten the testing turnaround time as a first step to improving the implementation of the repatriation program,” they said.

The national government earlier passed the burden of swab testing LSIs to local government units.

The UP team also recommended the “immediate passage” of the Bayanihan Law 2, which was recently approved on third reading by the Senate.

The report was authored by David, Rye, Ma. Patricia Agbulos, Rev. Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, with contributions from Eero Rosini Brillantes, Bernhard Egwolf, Troy Gepte, Rodrigo Angelo Ong, Michael Tee, and Benjamin Vallejo, Jr.—AOL, GMA News

 

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