THE coronavirus disease (Covid-19) positivity rate in Metro Manila has dropped to less than three percent over the past seven days, Octa fellow Dr. Guido David said on Friday, January 20, 2023.

David said NCR’s positivity rate went down to 2.9 percent as of January 18, from 4.7 percent on January 11.

He said the daily average cases also fell to 103 on January 19 from 166 on January 12.

David said the NCR’s Covid-19 reproduction number was at .73 as of January 16, while the average daily attack rate decreased to .71 per 100,000 population.

“Testing in the NCR has decreased to just 38 per day per 100k, the lowest since 2020,” he said in a Twitter post.

“Meanwhile, hospital occupancy in the NCR is also low at 24 percent while ICU (intensive care unit) occupancy also remained low at 19 percent,” he added.

Octa earlier said it no longer expects any huge waves of Covid-19 cases in 2023.

It added that Covid-19 cases are also not expected to go down to zero.

The Department of Health said that as of January 20, the country had a total of 10,863 active Covid 19 cases.

The Philippines’ total Covid-19 caseload stood at 4,071,151 with 65,654 deaths. (With HDT/SunStar Philippines)