Palace: Philippines ranked worst in pandemic resilience due to importance given in reopening progress

Malacañang said Wednesday the Philippines' worst placement in the Bloomberg COVID-19 Resilience Ranking is due to lack of country-specific gauge and heavy importance on reopening progress.

Acting presidential spokesperson Karlo Nograles was referring to Bloomberg's COVID Resilience Ranking for November, showing the Philippines dead last again among 53 countries with a resilience score of 43.1. 

The indicators used by Bloomberg include reopening progress, COVID-19 status, and quality of life.

"We acknowledge that the data provided by Bloomberg in its COVID-19 Resilience Ranking may be useful in evaluating our pandemic response. [But] we have to consider that the 53 countries in the report have different COVID-19 experiences and strategies. There is little consideration for country-specific COVID-19 context, which in our view is imperative to objectively assess how countries managed pandemic response," Nograles said.

"A case in point is the importance given by Bloomberg in reopening progress, which involves lockdown severity, flight capacity, and vaccinated travel routes," he added.

Nograles then cited that the country's Alert Level System policy has led to decreasing number of active COVID-19 cases with only 425 new COVID-19 cases recorded last November 30 which is the lowest reported in 2021, on top of the positivity rate which is at 2.1% which is one of the lowest since testing data became available in April 2020 and well within the standard 5% set by the World Health Organization.

Likewise, Nograles argued that the country's 1.71% case fatality rate remains one of the lowest, with the Philippines ranked 84th in the world by the Johns Hopkins University, and that there is no overcrowding in the country's hospitals with utilization rate registering all below 30% as of November 30, 2021.

Vaccination drive

In addition, Nograles said the ongoing three-day COVID-19 vaccination which is expected to vaccinate nine million people by the end of the day and the country's 7.1% economic growth in the third quarter that  exceeded estimates.

"We reiterate that our goal is to strike a balance between the management of COVID-19 and the safe reopening of the economy––to protect lives and secure livelihoods. Having said this, our economic team will continue to put a greater emphasis on our country-specific conditions or context in order to craft policies that are more responsive to our people’s needs and the requisites of economic recovery," he added.

Back in October, the Philippines also ranked last among 53 countries in the Bloomberg COVID-19 Resilience Ranking. — RSJ, GMA News