The National Capital Region (NCR) may downgrade to low risk classification in one to two weeks, OCTA Research Fellow Guido David said on Tuesday.

"Based on our projection, maybe within two weeks, it would be earlier, within one to two weeks we will be at low risk," David said during the ''Laging Handa'' virtual public briefing on Tuesday.

"We are just basically waiting for the positivity rate to go down around less than 10 percent and the ADAR (average daily attack rate) to less than 10 and to further reduce the hospital utilization. I think we will enter a low risk classification based on the metrics that we use," he said.

The average daily attack rate is 19.58 while the positivity rate is at 17 percent, he said. Both are high.

"Both are considered high. We are waiting for the ADAR to decrease to less than 10 percent so that we can say that our ADAR is in moderate and then our positivity rate we are also waiting for it to downgrade to less than 10 percent," he said.

David expressed support for the declaration of Alert Level 2 in Metro Manila but he still reiterates his opinion to ease the restriction once NCR enters the low risk classification.

"I have to make it clear that we support the decision of the national and the local governments to move to Alert Level 2. My perspective, personal opinion is if we can until the positivity rate decreases, because the positivity rate is still quite high, it is still at 17%. I think in one to two weeks it may go down to less than 10 percent," he said.

"We are not against Alert Level 2. My only perspective is to wait for one or two more weeks. So, it is just my opinion if we can wait until we enter the low risk before we declare Alert Level 2. But, again, we respect the decision of the national and local governments, we support their decision," he added.

However, David noted that most areas in the country show a trend of COVID-19 cases.

"Almost all of Luzon has a decreasing number of cases, it already reached its peak or is now going down. Including Baguio City, Calabarzon, Central Luzon. Even the cases in Visayas, and Cebu City, are going down; as well as in Tacloban, Iloilo and In Mindanao, Davao City," he said.

"The number of regions with acceleration has acceleration it includes Negros Oriental in Visayas and mostly in Mindanao, including Bukidnon and other regions in Cotabato," said David.

''Only some areas have an increasing number of cases and mostly are going down. We see that the overall numbers yesterday I think it is just around 15,000 which is already a downtrend. We're projecting, in fact, maybe today we can see around close to 10,000 and by next week hopefully the number of cases will be lowered to four digits," he added. Robina Asido/DMS