The country will log as much as 20,000 daily cases of Covid-19 until the middle of September or when the reproduction rate eventually slows down.

OCTA Research fellow Dr. Guido David said in the Laging Handa press briefing on Monday that the spike in cases is due to the highly transmissible Delta variant

He added that the effect of lockdowns won’t manifest at once.

“Usually, it takes three to four weeks before we can see the decrease of cases. But we can already see the decrease on reproduction number or the transmission of infection,” he said in Filipino.

In Metro Manila which was placed under enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) on Aug. 6 to 20 and modified ECQ starting Aug. 21, David said the transmission of the disease has slowed down from 1.47 to 1.0.

Going by David’s estimate, the transmission will slow down and cases will decrease by the middle of September.

But, as of now, David said it is expected that the country’s Covid-19 cases will continue to increase.

“Since we reached 19,000 a day, it could increase to more than 20,000 new Covid-19 cases per day, given that our reproduction number is still greater than 1 nationwide,” David said in Filipino.

Breaching more than 30,000 cases is not possible, he added.

Ranjit Rye, OCTA Research professor, said the imposition of the two-week ECQ greatly contributed to the reduction of Covid-19 transmission and slowed down the reproduction number.

Rye reminded the need to strictly follow minimum public health standards such as wearing of mask, face shield, and social distancing.

He also said vaccination will control the surge of Covid-19 cases.

On Monday, 22,366 new cases were reported to raise the active tally to 148,594, or 7.5 percent of the total 1.976 million infections since last year.