Palace: No country on Earth has perfect response to COVID-19

The Philippines has done a good job managing the COVID-19 crisis, Malacañang said Wednesday, even as the country continues to record thousands of new infections each day.

In an interview with CNN Philippines, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque maintained that the Philippines, through policies such as lockdowns, prevented up to 3.5 million infections based on projections from experts.

“That’s the context by which people should evaluate how well the government has responded to this challenge,” he said.

“No country in the world is perfect in dealing with coronavirus. And I would say that we’ve done very good so far in containing it and more so in limiting the deaths arising from coronavirus.”

The Philippines reported a total of 139,538 COVID-19 cases on Tuesday. The country ranked 22nd globally in terms of caseload, according to the Johns Hopkins University & Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center.

“Relative to the rest of the world, we are in number 22 but we are not as bad as countries that we consider as role models including the United States, which has now the highest number of cases and the highest number of deaths,” Roque said. “We’re still doing a lot better.”

Last month, Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon said the Philippines’ COVID-19 task force failed to properly handle the public health crisis since the infections in the country continue to climb.

Roque disputed Drilon’s observation, saying the Philippines has a low mortality rate, the critical care capacity remains “good” and most of the cases are mild and asymptomatic.—AOL, GMA News