THE OCTA Research Group said it would be too early to stop wearing face masks, even if it is already possible to bring down the alert level further to Alert Level 0.
Officials are now looking at the possibility of an Alert Level 0 since the number of COVID-19 cases on Friday dropped to 598 new cases.
The group said this was below the 650 cases they predicted, according to OCTA fellow Dr. Guido David.
The National Capital Region (NCR) had 149 cases, while Calabarzon registered 90 and 66 in Western Visayas.
The national positivity rate, on the other hand, was at 3.3 percent, David said.
He likewise said that bringing down the Alert Level to zero doesn’t really make it different from the current Alert Level 1, except that probably Alert Level 0 would mean not wearing face masks, but David said it would be too early to do that.