THE OCTA Research group said today, Saturday, October 23, that the COVID-19 reproduction rate in the National Capital Region (NRC) is now down to 0.45 from 0.57 last October 18.
Reproduction rate means the number of people that get infected by a single COVID-19 case. Experts have already said that a number below 1 means virus transmission is slowing down.
The group added that the seven-day average of new COVID-19 in the region is now already at 996 from a week-ago rate of 1,762, or a 43-percent decrease, OCTA fellow Dr. Guido David said on a Twitter post.
OCTA also said this is the first time since the week of July 22-28 that the seven-day average in NCR was pegged below the 1,000-level.
The Department of Health hinted that Alert Level 3 for the NCR, which should end by October 31, may go down further to Alert Level 2 if COVID-19 numbers continue to register a downward trend.
September 16 was when NCR was placed under Alert Level 4 as soon as the new classification system was introduced, which was downgraded to Alert Level 3 last October 16.