MANILA, Philippines — After first projecting a peak in the surge of cases within the next week, independent pandemic monitor OCTA Research sounded the alarm Friday over the sudden uptick in positive cases in recent days.

In an advisory, OCTA Research fellow Dr. Guido David said that the positivity rate — which refers to the percentage of cases coming out positive — was suddenly on the uptrend again after going down for a number of days in a row.

Per the Department of Healths latest update, Metro Manila made up 1,002 of the 2,828 new cases recorded nationwide on Thursday. Quezon City, Makati, and Manila were responsible for 215, 117, and 112 of those cases, respectively, while no other local government unit breached 100 cases.

It is not yet clear what is driving this change in trends. It is also not clear at this time when the peak will be reached in the NCR. Our projections show around 3,000 new cases nationwide on July 22, with about 1,100 in the NCR, David wrote.

OCTA Research — among the most accurate groups in COVID-19 projections over the pandemic — was careful to clarify that its earlier projections were based on data we obtained from testing laboratories care of the Department of Health.

To recall, it earlier said that the peak of the ongoing surge in cases was projected to end within seven days. This was because, they said, the daily positivity rate on July 15 reached 14 percent with the next three days showing consistently lower positivity rates.

However, the positivity rate jumped in July 19 and now shows an increasing trend, which hit 14.6 percent on July 20, the group said.

Cases are now rising in many parts of the country. The new sub-variants are immune evasive. We strongly advise the public to observe caution.

Experts have said that waning immunity against the coronavirus along with increased mobility could trigger small waves of transmission.

So far, only 15.1 million of the 154.1 million coronavirus vaccine doses administered were booster shots, according to the DOH National COVID-19 Vaccination Dashboard.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. earlier this week backed retaining the existing COVID-19 Alert Level System for the time being.