Bloomberg's worst place tag on Philippines very biased –Galvez

Government’s COVID-19 response chief implementer Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. on Thursday branded as very biased the report of Bloomberg that tagged the Philippines as the "worst place to be" under the pandemic scourge.

In a press conference, Galvez said the Bloomberg report is more inclined to the economic side as it evaluated the COVID-19 situation of the countries being studied.

“Saying that it is the worst place to be in COVID-19, I think that’s a very biased comment…Considering that in every peak of every country, that’s the worst place that you will be in [a pandemic],” he said.

Galvez also questioned that only 53 countries were included in the ranking when there are over 200 countries in the world.

He added that deaths, recovery, and treatment, number of active cases, as well as economic recovery should be all included as factors in the assessment.

Unlike other countries during their peak of COVID-19 cases, Galvez pointed out that “We never burn our dead. Hindi tayo naubusan ng crematorium (We never run out of crematoriums).”

“To be fair, we were able to fight with Delta na, at least, hindi tayo naubusan ng oxygen" (in which, at least, we never run out of oxygen tanks), he said.

Bloomberg's COVID Resilience Ranking indicated that the country gained the lowest overall resilience score of 40.5.

In June, the country placed 52nd and dropped to 53rd in September, with a resilience score of 40.2.

According to the Bloomberg article, which featured the October report,  the Philippines is among the "worst on vaccine coverage" as it recorded nearly 26% of its population were fully inoculated against COVID-19.

Further, it said the Philippines' score was affected by the imposed  restrictions on children in malls and other public spaces,  and international travel.

It also noted the Philippines' "conservative approach" in reopening the economy.

In addition, the Philippines reopened more businesses such as gyms and cinemas but it is still lagging behind Asian neighbors such as Thailand and Indonesia which already allowed entry of tourists. —LBG, GMA News