Hospitals in Metro Manila may reach full capacity by Holy Week, if the surge in COVID-19 infections is not contained, OCTA Research group warned.
In its latest report, OCTA said the reproduction rate of COVID-19 is at 1.9 which indicates that a COVID-19 positive individual is infecting two other persons.
“These projections suggest that the current surge in the capital is at a critical juncture, ” the independent panel of researchers said on its March 20 forecast.\
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It added that drastic and sweeping interventions to significantly reduce the reproduction number to 1.5 will delay this event by 2 weeks to mid-April.
“Unless the national government and our LGUs take drastic and immediate action to significantly reduce the reproduction number of the surge in Metro Manila, we should expect our hospital facilities and medical frontliners to be overwhelmed within a period of several weeks, just around and after Easter,” OCTA said.
OCTA added that its latest projection is on the conservative side already and did not take into account the spread of other COVID-19 variants detected in the capital region.
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“We wanted to present the best case scenario. We assumed that patients are hospitalized 7 days after onset of symptoms on average,” the group said.
“Based on a Manila-based hospital’s experience, we assumed that patients who die spend around 10 days in the hospital and other patients who survive are confined for 27 days,” it added.
The experts also assumed patients are hospitalized seven days after the onset of symptoms on average.
The Philippines logged record-high number of new infections for two days, with 7,000 and near 8,000 cases recorded. (RA)
