MANILA, Philippines — The number of people testing positive in the National Capital Region (NCR) may drop to less than 10 percent of the total tests conducted by next week, according to a member of the OCTA Research group.
OCTA fellow Guido David said NCR’s seven-day positivity rate dropped from 19.9 percent on May 30 to just 14.6 percent on June 6.
“We expect this to decrease to less than 10 percent next week as cases continue to decline,” David said in an advisory.
The positivity rate measures the percentage of positive results out of the total tests conducted. The World Health Organization previously recommended a positivity rate of five percent or below to effectively manage the pandemic.
Government data only include RT-PCR tests and not the more common antigen tests, meaning the actual number of cases could be higher.
But David said monitoring indicators such as the positivity rate could show if the trend is increasing or decreasing.
In his latest bulletin, the OCTA fellow said that COVID hospital bed occupancy in NCR decreased from 28.8 percent to 25.5 percent over the same period.
The country reported 1,131 new cases on Thursday (259 in NCR), up from 898 (180 in NCR) the previous day.