An official of the research group monitoring the Covid-19 pandemic sees the number of daily virus cases possibly dropping to 5,000 to 6,000 by the end of October.

In a television interview, OCTA Research fellow Guido David also said that within the week, daily new cases may reach 10,000 because of the backlog.

“That’s temporary, but generally our case trend is declining,” he said partly in Filipino.

David noted that reproduction number nationwide is 0.64 and the seven-day average of cases is at 8,400.

“There are places which are experiencing surge in cases just now,” he added partly in Filipino.

Citing the latest data from the Department of Health (DOH), David said the hospital utilization rate in the National Capital Region (NCR) has gone down to 47 percent, although intensive care unit utilization rate remained high at 59 percent.

NCR’s seven-day average of Covid-19 cases is 1,681, while the positivity rate is at 10 percent, David said.

“This is a very good reproduction number, positivity rate has improved and considered moderate but the target is still 5 percent,” he said.

However, NCR’s average daily attack rate (ADAR), or the number of individuals infected per 100,000 population, is 11.87.

David noted such ADAR is “high risk but it may go down to moderate by next week.”

On Saturday, NCR’s Alert Level was lowered to Level 3 from Level 4 due to the improvement of the Covid-19 case data.

On Sunday at 4 p.m., the DOH reported 6,913 new Covid-19 infections, bringing the country’s active cases to 81,641, while 10,237 new recoveries hiked the total to 2.598 million.