PH still lowest in pandemic resiliency ranking

For the second month in a row, the Philippines continued to languish at the bottom of Bloomberg’s COVID-19 resiliency ranking despite the decline in the daily count of new infections and the expansion of the vaccination coverage as reported by the government.

Of the 53 countries ranked by the New York-based media and data company, the Philippines placed last, with a resiliency score of 40.5, 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 Philippines, ranked last for a second month, has lifted lockdowns in the capital, while also allowing some foreign travelers to enter without quarantine, but continues to lag significantly on shots,’’ the report said.

Ireland, meanwhile, remained at the top of the rankings, with a resilience score of 75.1. The report cited the European Union country’s pace of inoculation that is “one of the world’s best.”

Indicators used to measure pandemic response include vaccination coverage, lockdown severity, progress on restarting travel (particularly air travel), easing of border curbs; case fatality rate, positivity rate, community mobility, and universal health-care coverage.

These parameters, the report said, “form a gauge that assess how far each place is from pre-COVID levels of normalcy.”

Nations with a high ranking reflect a “best-case scenario” of high immunization rates, relatively controlled case and death levels, and few travel curbs on vaccinated people, the report added.

Slow jab rollout

The country’s dismal ranking in the study may be attributed to the slow deployment of vaccines and low level of jab acceptance in areas outside Metro Manila, according to an infectious disease expert, Dr. Rontgene Solante.

“If you look at the resiliency ranking, vaccination rate in countries has the biggest impact… and the Philippines still lags behind in vaccination,” Solante told the Inquirer on Thursday.

Solante, a member of the vaccine expert panel of the Department of Health (DOH), said the country continued to struggle in controlling the spread of COVID-19 to below 1,000 cases daily despite the downward trend being reported of late.

This is due to logistical limitations in vaccine distribution and low coverage of the rollout in rural areas, he said.

Another possible reason, he said, is the state of the healthcare facilities in these areas where COVID-19 patients may not be receiving standard care management.

“Unless you are a COVID referral hospital, most tertiary hospitals outside Metro Manila are struggling to accommodate and provide care, especially in critical cases,” Solante said.

‘Unfair, biased’

But for the spokesperson of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), one of the first administration officials to comment on the latest Philippine ranking, the Bloomberg report was “unfair’’ and “biased’’ toward Western countries.

“It’s unfair to characterize our country as [the] lowest because we’re not [the] lowest in the world; we’re just the lowest among those 25 largest countries utilized by Bloomberg,” Jonathan Malaya said in an ANC interview on Thursday.

Malaya took issue with Bloomberg covering only 53 out of the almost 200 countries in the world.

In explaining its methodology, Bloomberg said it included only 53 countries “for brevity and relevance, and to limit the ranking to economies valued at more than $200 billion prior to the pandemic.”

But Malaya said the inclusion of mostly Western “welfare states” in the ranking put developing countries like the Philippines at a disadvantage.

The DILG official remained optimistic, however, that the country’s ranking would improve in November with the reported drop in Covid-19 cases and improving vaccine coverage.

“We’re getting there. I would expect an improvement to the ranking by next month,” he said.

Case bulletin

The DOH on Thursday said it registered 3,694 new COVID-19 cases, slightly higher than the previous day’s count of 3,218.

The latest tally halted a five-day decline in new cases and brought the total number of infections to 2,772,491 since the pandemic began.

Active cases stood at 49,835. The majority, or 73.4 percent, are mild, 11 percent are moderate, 6.8 percent are asymptomatic, 6.2 percent are severe and 2.6 percent are critical.

There were 3,924 new recoveries, raising the total number of survivors to 2,680,081.

The death toll rose to 42,575 with the addition 227 patients succumbing to the disease.

The positivity rate inched up to 8.6 percent after 4,365 tests turned out positive out of a total of 50,755 tests administered.

The World Health Organization recommends a positivity rate of below 5 percent or lower for at least 14 days before restrictions are relaxed.