Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking published on Tuesday ranked the Philippines 52nd out of 53 economies with an embarrassing score of only 45.3, next to last place Argentina’s 37.
The report, based on data as of June 27, considered indicators such as the percentage of people who have been vaccinated, the severity of lockdowns, flight capacity, vaccinated travel routes, one-month cases per 100,000 population, one-month case fatality rate, total deaths per one million people, and positivity rate.
The ranking was topped by the United States with a high resiliency score of 76, New Zealand with 73.7, Switzerland and Israel with 72.9, and France with 72.8.
Joining the Philippines in the bottom rung of the rankings are Malaysia (46.6), India (47.7), Indonesia (48.2), Colombia (48.6), Pakistan (50.7), Bangladesh (51.3) and Peru (51.4).
“India, the Philippines and some Latin America countries rank lowest amid a perfect storm of variant-driven outbreaks, slow vaccination, and global isolation,” said Bloomberg.
The latest study introduces a new element in the ranking – reopening progress – which measures the ease of moving in and out of a place and the recovery of air travel.
A government that pats itself on the back and tells its people that it is doing an excellent job when faced with criticism regarding its pandemic response and strategy will most likely belittle and ignore this ranking that puts the country among the worst in the planet. However, if our officials are open minded, they can still use the data and information provided in the report to learn from best practices and slowly improve the quality of its response and the resilience of the country against the pandemic.
With so much room for improvement, would it be too much for Filipinos to expect more from their government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic?*
