The Department of Health (DOH) said Monday that the reimposed enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) over NCR Plus would prevent an additional 430,000 by the end of April.
According to Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire, the projections were made through modeling tool FASSSTER which showed that “further exponential increase [is] likely” if “we are not going to impose harder lockdowns or harder measures.”
“They said that if we don’t implement immediate and harder measures, we will see 430,000 cases by April 30 nationally and 350,000 cases in NCR alone by the end of April,” she said in a briefing.
The DOH official said Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cavite, Rizal, and Laguna—the provinces included in the “bubble”—are already at high to critical risk based on the two-week growth rate and average daily attack rate of COVID-19.
Vergeire also lamented that the Philippines’ health system is “choking,” with healthcare utilization rates reaching 63% in Metro Manila and 58% in Calabarzon.
ECQ expected to prevent 430,000 active COVID-19 cases by end-April: DOH
“Our main objective in implementing stricter community quarantine is for us to have our health system capacity be manageable enough,” she said.
Areas in the NCR Plus “bubble” would be under from March 29 to April 4.
The DOH official explained that the effects of ECQ will not be immediately felt due to the incubation period of the coronavirus, which takes up to 14 days.
“This ECQ aims to slow down the surge of cases, stop the spread of the variants, allow the health system to recover, and of course, to protect more lives,” she said.
However, the projection could be prevented if the national and local government would continue to implement strict health protocols, localized lockdowns, and curfew hours.
“Possible ‘yan pero binase natin sa current reproduction number ng mga 1.9 so ibig sabihin kung hindi pa natin mapabagal ang pagtaas ng bilang ng kaso, ‘yan ang puwede nating maabot na numero per day ‘yan,” David said.