After 3 months, PH bottom-dweller no more

From being considered the worst for three consecutive months, the Philippines has “edged up” in the rankings of countries being evaluated for their pandemic response.

“Undetected infection is finally coming under control,” the latest Bloomberg report said in summing up how the Philippines managed to improve by three places to emerge 50th out of the 53 countries covered by the media and data company’s COVID-19 Resilience Ranking for December.

The report for this month is titled “The Best and Worst Places to Be as Omicron Upends Christmas.”

Vax distribution

With a resiliency score of 52, “the Philippines—ranked last the past three months—edges up three places as restrictions were eased, vaccination rates improved and the positive test rate fell, suggesting that undetected infection is finally coming under control,” the Bloomberg report said.

The country’s COVID-19 vaccination drive is now distributing 94.1 doses per 100 people, from 73.2 doses in November, according to the report, which considers the inoculation rate as a key differentiator in the rankings.

It noted that the top 10 countries in the December list face alarming new waves of COVID-19 infections but were also among the first to give out third shots. Southeast Asia continued to dominate the bottom of the ranking for the seventh month in a row, the report noted. For this month the last placer is Vietnam, whose “export-dependent economy was slammed by outbreaks, causing factory shutdowns during the peak holiday production season,” Bloomberg said.

The COVID-19 Resilience Ranking is a monthly snapshot that seeks to capture “how the world’s biggest 53 economies are responding to the same once-in-a-generation threat.”

Case update

Among the indicators used to rank the countries are their levels of success in virus containment, quality of health care, vaccination coverage, overall mortality and progress toward restarting travel.

In its case bulletin on Thursday, the Department of Health (DOH) said the country’s COVID-19 positivity rate slightly increased to 1.1 percent—from 0.9 percent the previous day—with 354 of the 32,118 people who tested on Dec. 21 proving positive for the coronavirus.

The latest rate was still within the World Health Organization’s requirement target of less than 5 percent.

The new cases brought the national total to 2,837,903 since the start of the pandemic. The latest report did not include 13 labs that failed to submit their latest data.

Of the 288 new cases, the DOH said 241, or 84 percent, occurred within the last 14 days, from Dec. 10 to Dec. 23.

Active cases, or the number of individuals who remain sick, stood at 9,251, or 0.3 percent of the national total. Of the active cases, 3,204 were mild, 1,797 severe and 377 were critical.

There were 270 more people who recovered, bringing the total number of survivors to 2,777,671.

The death toll rose to 50,981 with 65 new fatalities. However, only two of the reported deaths occurred in December, while the rest were between April and November this year. INQ