MANILA, Philippines — Experts from the OCTA Research Group on Friday warned against easing of lockdown measures in the capital despite the rate of infections started going down.
OCTA Research fellow Fr. Nicanor Austriaco said the reproduction number should be less than 1 for several weeks. A reproduction number of 1 or higher indicates sustained transmission of the virus.
NCR’s reproduction number is currently at 0.99.
“We urge the national government, as one possible benchmark for changing quarantine levels, is not to exit MECQ (modified enhanced community quarantine) until at least the R is less than 0.9 in a sustained manner,” Austriaco said in a webinar organized by the Cardinal Santos Medical Center.
“As (OCTA fellow) Professor Guido (David) pointed out, we’re currently somewhat unstable and the reason why it’s unstable is because not all the LGUs (local government units) are decreasing and so you always have the possibility that as some of the LGUs recover there will be an outbreak in one LGU that will spill over to the adjacent LGUs,” he added.
SOURCE: GMA News