FILE PHOTO Philippine overseas workers who were quarantined for weeks after returning home wait for flights back to their home cities around the country. (Photo by Ted ALJIBE / AFP)
MANILA, Philippines — Despite measures in place and ramped up vaccination programs, the Philippines’ status hardly changed in Bloomberg’s COVID-19 resilience ranking among nations amid the highly transmissible Omicron threat at the start of the year.
The Philippines retained its 50th spot for the second consecutive time in the list of 53 countries whose performance were measured based on their response to the most recent coronavirus threat.
“The omicron wave is abating, with more countries accelerating their shift this month to living with the virus, a key differentiator among the best and worst places to be during the COVID era,” Bloomberg said in its February report.
The Philippines is no longer at the bottom, and even placed a few rungs higher in the most recent Bloomberg’s COVID-19 resilience ranking. Graph from Bloomberg
While no longer at the bottom rung of the Bloomberg list, the Philippines however could not shake off its poor response perception amid low testing capacities despite long lockdowns, easing border controls and the economy’s shift to normalcy.
On Friday, the country reported 1,671 new infections to bring the total case count of COVID cases to 3,658,892, including 55,140 active cases or 1.5 percent of case total, according to the Department of Health.
The positivity rate on Friday was 5.6 percent, lower than Thursday’s 6.3 percent, and well within World Health Organization’s ideal positivity rate, the DOH added.
A total of 62,506,113 Filipinos have been fully vaccinated or 69 percent of the 90-million individuals targeted for immunization by the end of the second quarter.
Highest, lowest
The United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, remains its No. 1 resiliency ranking, as it scored highest among the 53 economies tracked on Vaccine Doses Administered. It also performed well on Vaccinated Travel Routes and has maintained a low case count the past month, along with limited overall mortality.
UAE is followed by Ireland and Saudi Arabia for “handling the pandemic the best, with the least social and economic disruption.”
In contrast, Pakistan dropped to last place due to low levels of inoculation, tight restrictions on unvaccinated people as well as weak healthcare infrastructure.
Hong Kong, which faces a record outbreak on its latest wave of the virus, falls second-last, followed by Russia and the Philippines.