Duque: Too soon to place NCR under Alert Level 1

The National Capital Region (NCR) remains at moderate risk for COVID-19, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said Thursday.

In an interview on Balitanghali, Duque said that though the NCR has a negative 2-week growth rate at -83% its average daily attack rate is still at high risk.

High risk means the ADAR is more than 7 per 100,000 population.

“Itong NCR nasa 12.22 pa rin which means high risk pa rin siya. Kapag binangga mo ito doon sa ating NCR na -83% ang 2-week growth rate, ang kalalabasan moderate pa rin,” Duque said.

[NCR is still at 12.22 which means it is still at high risk. If you add this with the 2-week growth rate of -83%, it will still be moderate.]

“So kung moderate risk level ang classification ay alert level 2 pa rin ‘yan (so if this is moderate risk level classification, it means the alert level is still 2),” he added.

Duque said the region may only deescalate to alert level one once its ADAR decreases to below 7 per 100,000 population.

“We hope that the alert level 1 will be achieved sooner rather than later but again we cannot say for now that when we deescalate to alert level 1 because as I’ve said we are guided by our metrics,” Duque said.

Meanwhile, he said the bed utilization rate in the region is at 28% while the ICU utilization rate is at 32.28%.

“So mababa na. Hopefully, this will tilt the balance in favor of an earlier de-escalation but not before reaching the ADAR of less than 7 cases per 100,000 population,” he said.

The OCTA Research group earlier said NCR is now classified as “low risk” for COVID-19 transmission as the situation in the region continues to improve. —NB, GMA News