Despite the small increase in COVID-19 cases monitored, OCTA Research Fellow Guido David said so far there was no significant increase because of recent campaign activities.

"We have not monitored the increase of cases from the campaign rallies and sorties. We have our campaign rallies since February but we have not yet monitored any sustained increase of cases. ''Although we see some spikes but it is just small which immediately disappear, so it's just like clustering of cases," David said during the ''Laging Handa'' public briefing on Monday.

"Some were saying for us to wait up to two weeks, but so far we have not seen any indication that there is a clustering of cases because of the recent election on May 9," he added.

David said the positivity rate in the whole country remains low at 1.1 percent while the reproduction number is around 0.6.

"There is no increase yet to greater than one, so we're still okay; even the hospital utilization rate is still low," he said.

In another interview, Edsel Salvana, an infectious disease expert, said despite campaign activities in the past months, the number of COVID-19 cases "remain manageable."

"Of course, we are worried because of the volume of the rallies and also during the election day where people are crowding. But right now, the numbers remain manageable," he said.

"And even if the numbers do go up to several thousand, because of the high vaccination rate the number of people who actually developed severe disease remained low. So we will not go back to the 2020 lockdown, " he added.

Salvana said although the booster rate in the country is still low, he added there are oral medicines available to help prevent severe infection.

"Even if those who do not yet have booster shots will be infected, we have medicines that can be used to prevent further severe diseases like this Paxlovid and Remdesivir," he said. Robina Asido/DMS