COVID resilience report that ranked PH last lacked country-specific context — Palace

Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles during the Laging Handa press briefing on the update of COVID 19. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — The Bloomberg report that ranked the Philippines as worst in COVID-19 resilience had “little consideration” to the specific COVID-19 situation of each country it had evaluated, Malacañang said Wednesday.

Cabinet Secretary and acting presidential spokesperson Karlo Nograles was referring to Bloomberg’s COVID-19 Resilience Ranking dubbed “The Best and Worst Places to Be as Winter Meets Omicron’‘ where the Philippines placed at the bottom among 53 countries.

“We have to consider that the 53 countries in the report have different COVID-19 experiences and strategies,” he said in a statement.

“There is little consideration for country-specific COVID-19 context, which in our view is imperative to objectively assess how countries managed pandemic response,” he added.

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

Nograles said evidence shows that the government’s new alert level system and granular lockdowns were some of the “key interventions” in effectively managing COVID-19 risks “while providing for an environment conducive to economic growth.”

He noted new cases dropped to 425 on Nov. 30, which is the lowest in 2021, and the latest positivity rate is 2.1% which is also one of the lowest since testing data became available in April 2020.

Nograles added that the country’s 1.71% case fatality remains to be the lowest and there is no overcrowding in hospitals nationwide.

He also noted the 7.1% growth of the Philippine economy in the third quarter.

“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,” he said.

“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.

/MUF