COVID-19 cases are expected to reach 90,000 by the end of July and 140,000 by the end of August, mathematician Guido David, a member of the University of the Philippines Octa Research group, said today.
In an interview with ABS-CBN’s Teleradyo, Guido said that while things are getting worse at the National Capital Region (NCR), the curve is flattening in Cebu City. The Queen City of the South was under the strictest form of lockdown, the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), from June until early this month.
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“It’s not going down [in NCR] but the trend in Cebu is that it’s going down. The curve in Cebu is flattening. So that means [most cases] are from the NCR. The trend in NCR is that [COVID-19 cases are] going up. Not just in NCR but also in Calabarzon,” Guido said in English and Filipino.
“One possible explanation [why they’re flattening the curve] in Cebu, they went back to ECQ, so the cases went down.”
He clarified that despite the bleak picture, his team thinks that shifting NCR to a stricter lockdown, the modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ), should not be the Duterte administration’s first option. However, the government has already warned that should cases reach 85,000 by the end of July, Metro Manila could go back to MECQ.
“MECQ, that’s really not our recommendation. That’s the last resort if the measures that local government units have in place are no longer working. As of now, the hospitals are full; that’s our problem. If the cases do not slow down, our hospitals will be overwhelmed,” he said.
The Philippines has 80, 448 reported COVID-19 cases as of yesterday, with 1,932 dead and 26, 110 recoveries.
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