Cases may hit 8,000 a day, OCTA warns

The country’s daily tally of Covid-19 cases could hit 8,000 a day by the end of March, the OCTA Research Group warned on Sunday.

OCTA Research Fellow Guido David said that if the reproduction rate of 1.95 remains, the country could see around 18,000 to 20,000 cases by mid-April.

“ the end of March, pwedeng nasa 8,000 or more cases na tayo per day sa buong Pilipinas ( the end of March, we could have 8,000 or more cases per day in the whole Philippines),” Guido said in a radio interview.

“Hindi tayo nananakot, sinasabi lang natin na yan ang science eh, wala namang fear-mongering (We don’t want to cause panic, we are just saying what the since told us without fear mongering),” he added.

The reproduction number or (R0) indicates how infectious a disease is. A R0 of 1 means that each infection causes one infection, and an R0 of 1.9 means that each existing infection causes more than one infection.

The OCTA’s previous projection was only at 1.6, but the infection has spread faster than predicted, Guido added.

“Yung projections namin nagkatotoo na. Mas mabilis lang siya ngayon kaysa sa original naming projection, kaya nag-readjust tayo ng projections, wala naman itong hocus pocus (Our projections were fulfilled. The increase was faster than our original projection so we re-adjusted our projections, there is no hocus pocus),” he said.