DOH to focus on pandemic response amid PH’s low ranking in COVID-19 resilience index

FILE PHOTO Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire explains a point during a DOH press briefing. Screengrab from livestream

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) is hoping that the public will not be disheartened by international reports showing the low resilience of the Philippines to COVID-19, and advised Filipinos to instead focus on the country’s efforts to address the pandemic.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said Friday that international reports like Bloomberg’s COVID Resilience Ranking where the Philippines placed last for the second consecutive time may be discouraging to some Filipinos.

“Bukas naman lagi ang ating gobyerno para dyan. We will get points for us to improve, but we would just like to tell the public—kasi minsan itong mga survey na ito and analysis, nawawalan po ng loob ang ating mga kababayan—na sana po ay hindi tayo naaapektuhan ng ganito. Focus lang tayo sa ginagawa natin sa ating bansa,” she told an online media briefing.

(The government is open to studies like these. We will get points for improvement. But we would just like to tell the public to not be affected by these reports. Let us just focus on the pandemic response in our country.)

“Focus lang tayo, tuloy pa rin ang gagawin nating response at mas pag-iigtingin pa rin natin (Let us just focus, and we assure that we will continue to intensify our pandemic response),” she added.

The Philippines ranked last in the latest Bloomberg report concerning 53 countries, posting a resiliency score of only 40.5 and trailing its Southeast Asian neighbor Vietnam which got a score of 44, as well as Thailand and Malaysia, which scored 46.8 and 48.9, respectively.

The indicators used in the report include vaccination coverage, virus containment, severity of lockdowns, quality of healthcare system, progress toward restarting travel, and the overall mortality throughout the pandemic.

Vergeire, however, noted that the “context” differs across countries. She said that the United States, for example, already has a “robust” healthcare system even before the start of the pandemic, and that other countries have their own vaccine manufacturers.

“We will always have different contexts. We cannot compare an apple with an orange. Hindi po pwedeng ganun. But the analysis is there, the research is there, tatanggapin po natin ‘yan, nandyan ‘yan, gagamitin natin kung ano mang mga punto ang sinasabi nila,” she said.

(We will always have different contexts. We cannot compare an apple with an orange. You cannot do that. But the analysis is there and we will accept that. We will use the points they raised.)

“But just to tell everybody and the public, hindi po kami nagpapabaya sa ating response (we did not neglect our pandemic response). We just want to tell everybody, mula’t mula pa po nakita po natin kung paano nag-improve ang state ng ating pandemic response (we saw how our pandemic response has improved compared to the start),” she added.

Vergeire also mentioned that the ranking did not include all countries in the world and that the study was conducted when the Philippines was having a surge of cases due to the Delta variant of coronavirus.

Nevertheless, the health official stressed that there were improvements in the country’s pandemic response, including the increase of testing laboratories, quarantine facilities, and vaccination rate. The country’s case fatality rate also remained lower than in other countries, said Vergeire.

EDV