The wave of infection of the Omicron XBB subvariant of the coronavirus may be ending now, as COVID-19 positivity rates in the National Capital Region (NCR) and other areas in Luzon are decreasing, OCTA Research fellow Dr. Guido David said Tuesday.
David said that among the factors that placed NCR and 72 other areas under Alert Level 1 from November 1 to November 15 is their high vaccination coverage.
This dovetails with the expressed hope of President Ferdinand R. Marcos last week when he enjoined Filipinos to get back to their normal lives before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Mr. Marcos said it was crucial to show the world that the Philippines is slowly getting back on its feet.
“It is a good thing to remind people that the pandemic may have been difficult, the pandemic really put us through the wringer. But we are back,” he said in a speech in Bacolod City as he graced the culminating activity of the 43rd MassKara Festival.
“The pandemic is fading away. We are learning to manage it and now it is time for us to all go back to work, to all go back to our normal lives, to remind ourselves of all the opportunities that were before us before the pandemic…It is time for us to go back to all of those endeavors that we were undertaking before Covid hit,” the President added.
Meanwhile, the Philippines on Tuesday recorded 676 new COVID-19 infections, the lowest daily tally since June 28, when 576 cases were reported.
According to the Department of Health, active cases went down to 19,340 from 20,227 on Monday. The new infections pushed the nationwide tally to 4,005,157.
OCTA’s David, in a Super Radyo dzBB interview, said the positivity rate is decreasing in Metro Manila and other regions such as Calabarzon and Central Luzon, the suburbs of the big city.
“That’s a good sign that the XBB wave at least might be already ending,” he said. “We think that’s what brought the surge recently and now it’s going down.”
David earlier said that the XBB, a recombinant of two Omicron subvariants, might be the cause of the increase in COVID-19 cases in the NCR in September.
Metro Manila’s seven-day COVID-19 positivity rate, or the percentage of people who were found positive for COVID-19 among the total number of individuals tested, decreased to 10 percent on October 29, from 12.3 percent on October 22.
In the past two weeks, the National Capital Region had the highest number of new cases with 4,817, followed by Calabarzon with 2,977, Central Luzon with 1,736, Western Visayas with 1,665, and Davao Region with 1,158.
The DOH reported 1,544 more recoveries, raising the overall tally to 3,921,708. Thirty-five new fatalities were listed as the death toll increased to 64,109.
The bed occupancy rate in the country stood at 23.7% on Monday, with 6,739 occupied and 21,680 vacant beds. A total of 7,615 individuals were tested on Sunday, while 301 testing laboratories submitted data.
