OCTA Research said on Saturday that the current enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) imposed in the National Capital Region (NCR), Bulacan, Rizal, Laguna and Cavite in the past two weeks helped bring down the growth rate of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) in NCR.

The group presented a report to the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) saying there was a negative one-week virus growth rate in the following cities in NCR: Pasay, Marikina, Mandaluyong, Taguig, Manila, Makati, Las Piñas, Valenzuela and Quezon City. However, OCTA Research said there was “barely” a negative growth rate in Parañaque and Caloocan.

“There is hope that the NCR will be on a downward trend by next week,” OCTA Research Group said.

It added the trend in the aforementioned NCR cities was “very encouraging” but noted that testing was 20 percent lower during the past Holy Week.

OCTA Research said that there was an overall decrease in the reproduction number of the virus in NCR, or from from 1.88 percent before the ECQ was started last March 29 to 1.23 percent during the second week of the quarantine measure imposition.

However, the 1.23 reproduction number will still assure that “significant viral transmissions continue.”

“The average daily number of new cases of Covid-19 in the NCR Plus is still very high at 5,000 a day,” it said.