OCTA recommends retaining GCQ over NCR Plus in June

The OCTA Research group on Wednesday recommended retaining the general community quarantine (GCQ) status of Metro Manila and neighboring provinces in June.

OCTA Research fellows Professor Guido David and Fr. Nicanor Austriaco said that while cases in NCR Plus (Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Rizal) have decreased, “the numbers are still high.” 

“While we believe that we can relax restrictions, we think that we should try to retain the GCQ at this time because the cases are still significant,” David said in an online forum.

NCR Plus is under “GCQ with heightened restrictions” until the end of May.

David said some of the “heightened restrictions” could be relaxed to allow more businesses to operate at a higher capacity.

OCTA also said it is too early to loosen restrictions in NCR Plus to modified GCQ, the least stringent lockdown classification.

“In fact, back in February, we were at 400 cases [in Metro Manila] per day but we were still in GCQ so it doesn’t seem to be the time to relax to MGCQ at this time. It also gives us the wrong messaging to the people,” David said.

“We want to avoid situations where people become very complacent because they feel that the situation has improved significantly, that there are no more cases, when in fact there are still cases,” he added.

OCTA said Metro Manila averaged 1,099 new COVID-19 cases daily over the past week, 80% lower than during the peak of the surge in infections in April.

“That is about 80% lower than the average during the peak of the surge. The single-day peak was 8,000 but the daily average peak was 5,550, so this is a significant improvement,” David said.

David also said NCR's reproduction number, which refers to the number of people that each COVID-19 case can infect, has decreased to 0.53 while its positivity rate has gone down to 10% from a high of 25% in April.

The Philippines has logged 1,188,672 COVID-19 cases with 1,120,452 recoveries and 20,019 deaths as of Tuesday afternoon. —KBK, GMA News