CORONAVIRUS disease (Covid-19) cases outside the National Capital Region (NCR) Plus areas have increased by 200 percent over the past eight days, Octa Research fellow Dr. Guido David said on Friday, January 21, 2022.
David said cases in areas outside Metro Manila Plus areas, which include Cavite, Laguna, Rizal and Cavite, rose from less than 4,000 cases from January 12 to almost 12,000 cases on January 20.
In an online forum, David said it is not surprising as the Covid-19 surge was expected to “spread out” in other regions.
David said while cases in Metro Manila Plus slowed down, cases in highly urbanized cities outside were “accelerating.”
In Cebu City, one of the major cities in the country, he said daily Covid-19 cases may peak at less than 1,000 cases by the end of January.
“They’re definitely on an increasing trend, it’s not yet peaking,” he said.
On Thursday, January 20, a total of 825 fresh Covid-19 cases were recorded in Cebu City, the highest daily tally since the pandemic started in 2020.
A total of 4,570 active cases were tallied in the city.
The total active Covid-19 cases in Cebu City went as low as 11 on January 1.
David said Cebu City only had a maximum of 300 daily cases during the surge in the third quarter of 2021 brought about by the Delta variant.
The country is experiencing another surge believed to be due to the more transmissible but reportedly less infectious Omicron variant.
In Metro Manila, David projected that based on patterns, cases will dip to less than 1,000 daily cases by February 14 and less than 500 by end of February.
“Today and over the next few days, I am expecting roughly the same range of new cases, about 29K to 33K total with a median of 31K. Although I am expecting new cases to decrease in the NCR (8 to 9K today), the increase outside NCR and Calabarzon will compensate for the decrease,” he said in a Twitter post. (SunStar Philippines)