Infectious disease expert Edsel Salvana expressed optimism that the alert level in Metro Manila may be downgraded to two before the year ends.

"If we will continue this and the hospital utilization and other metrics continue to go down especially in Christmas maybe we will be downgraded to Level 2, as long as we continue to observe our minimum public health standards and the vaccination of our people," Salvana said during the ''Laging Handa'' public briefing on Monday.

The National Capital Region is under Alert Level Three starting October 16 to October 31.

"One big insurance policy we have is the increasing number of our vaccination rate here in NCR. Our fully vaccinated population is more than 80 percent. Hopefully that even improves towards the end of October and towards Christmas," he added.

Salvana said the preliminary assessment on the pilot implementation shows a positive result as the number of cases in NCR continue to go down.

"The preliminary assessment seems to be good but of course we know that there is delay in the effects of our actions. Actually, a lot of the decrease in the number of cases is due to the fact that we had a lockdown early last August because it takes a while for the hospitals to get decongested," he said.

"The fact that we do not see an increase in the number of cases and it’s almost been a month, I think it’s very, very encouraging," he added.

Salvana hoped the improvements will continue "if everything goes according to plan, and if there is no new variant that will come out". Robina Asido/DMS