OCTA: Philippines may get below 500 COVID-19 cases daily by April

The OCTA Research said Saturday that the country will achieve below 500 daily COVID-19 cases by April.

“That’s what we hope to achieve by April. We hope by the Holy Week our daily cases would actually go down to 500,” Dr. Butch Ong of the OCTA Research Team said at the Laging Handa briefing.

Ong reported that the country’s COVID-19 reproduction number — or the number of people infected by one case — slightly increased at around 0.26.

“That’s still quite good. We hope that when April enters, the country’s daily cases will be steady at below 500 level,” he said.

“That is assuming that no new variant of concern will enter the country,” Ong added.

Ong said the National Capital Region recorded around 130 new COVID-19 cases as of Friday.

The country had a total of 545 new COVID-19 cases on Friday.

According to Ong, Calabarzon, Central Luzon, and Western Visayas are already having daily COVID-19 cases in double digits. –LBG/KG, GMA News