The tighter general community quarantine protocols implemented over the NCR “bubble” is unlikely to lower the virus reproduction number to 1 within two weeks, a member of the OCTA Research group said Tuesday.
According to Professor Guido David, it took 28 to reduce the virus reproduction number when the Philippines experienced a COVID-19 surge in 2020.
“Right now, the reproduction number in NCR is about 2.1 and if we want to reduce the number of cases, that means we have to reduce the reproduction number from 2.1 all the way down to 1. This cannot happen in two weeks, unfortunately,” he told CNN Philippines.
The virus reproduction number determines the number of people that one COVID-19 patient can infect.
“If we could get the reproduction number to about 1.5, that’s actually very optimistic. It’s unlikely to get it below that within two weeks. I’m not saying it’s impossible but it seems unlikely,” David said.
The government implemented a stricter general community quarantine in the NCR Plus bubble (National Capital Region, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Riza) for 2 weeks due to the spike of COVID-19 cases.