The Philippines will not be having a Stealth Omicron surge due to the fact that the surge that we have experienced right now is already due to the BA.2 otherwise known as the Stealth Omicron variant.
Reproduction rate is going down and is below 1, risk level projections for the week of Feb 3 to 9 is at Low level. Continued wearing of face masks is still essential.
The Philippines was successful in handling Omicron due to the fact that hospitalizations were low and the deaths were minimal. We did all that without imposing a full lock down unlike the previous covid waves. The economy was able to stay afloat because businesses were still allowed to operate.
The government will have to ease the restrictions at some point and go down to Alert Level 1 but masks will continue to stay for a while.
There is no more need for full lockdowns in the future because the Philippines is ready for the next surge. When the government declared Alert Level 3 the citizens voluntarily lessened their mobility and quarantined themselves but businesses were operating normally because contingency plans were already in place.
The number of infections will not rise significantly even if we allow foreign travel because the level of positive cases that we get from foreign travelers are actually very low, most cases are still local transmissions. Foreign travel will help out economy bounce back.
Other countries are seeing surge, decline and surge again pattern of Omicron due to refusal to wear masks. But here in the Philippines, mask adoption rate is very high and we have a good chance of beating covid.
Immunity wanes after 3 to 6 months that is why we are seeing surges periodically, but as more people get boosted and vaccinated we have good immunity against all covid variants.
The virus has already hit 3 to 4 million people in NCR alone. This is sufficient enough to stop the virus from spreading because it has no one else to infect anymore.
Our biggest roadblock to getting back to normal is resuming face to face classes. There is vaccine hesitancy among the parents of the children.
On The Upcoming May 2022 Elections
All survey polls by polling groups are still being done face to face, these surveys are conducted by their respective field offices.
Surveys are quite accurate and offer a real world view on the voting population.
Their next survey will be conducted in February and it is interesting to see how the percentages will change.
Fun Facts About Guido David
Guido loves to play mahjong, bridge and poker in his spare time.
He teaches Mathematics in UP Diliman and his research areas include biomechanics, mathematical modeling, mathematics of finance, game theory and artificial intelligence.
Dr David demonstrated the importance of science communicators in dealing with real world problems such as the pandemic. As a result, OCTA’s recent work helped the government make decisions leveraging different data and forecasts from mathematical projections
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