Kapamilya celebrity Enchong Dee shared his concern about the status of the country’s battle against COVID-19.
In a tweet Wednesday, April 15, Enchong said he is saddened by the country’s ranking in the Asia-Pacific coronavirus safety rankings.
“After fact checking… this is legitimate and sad,” Enchong tweeted.
After fact checking… this is legitimate and sad. pic.twitter.com/JOtGZNcqpM
— Enchong Dee (@enchongdee777) April 15, 2020
Dee shared a screenshot of a Nikkei Asia Review article about the pandemic safety ranking among Asia-Pacific nations.
According to the article, South Korea gets the highest ranking as the most successful in minimizing the cases and effectively containing the virus.
The ranking was based on scores from more than 70 criteria and data from a range of sources, including the World Health Organization. It was broken down into categories such as “quarantine efficiency,” including travel restrictions; “government management efficiency,” which covers defense capabilities; “monitoring and detection,” such as the scope of testing; and “emergency treatment readiness,” which includes factors like the quantity of hospital beds.
“The point is that we are looking at not only when countries succeeded [in minimizing cases], but also looking at when a country was affected quite significantly but managed to stop it,” said Dmitry Kaminskiy, founder and managing partner at Deep Knowledge Ventures, a Hong Kong-based venture capital fund that targets health care and longevity technology
The Philippines, however, ranked the lowest at number 20 following Indonesia.
In the same article, the Philippines and Indonesia were described as countries with inefficient government management against the pandemic.
“These countries are likely to face ‘quite negative dynamics’ in the coming weeks, lamenting the ‘inefficiency of government management’ in the Philippines in particular,” said in the article.
Currently, the country is ranked 1st among Southeast Asian countries in terms of the total number of COVID-19 cases at 5,453.
Government has been criticized for its incompetence in handling the crisis from the start. As early as January no less then President Duterte showed complacency saying the virus will die a natural death. It was not until the country had it’s first local transmission that the government started working on its plans.
However, the move was already late as the number of cases started to increase with the health care facilities caught unprepared with lack of hospital beds, and lack of proper protective equipment for the front liners causing death to numerous doctors and medical professionals.
Apart from that, the DOH has been slammed also for its reluctance to conduct mass testing early on.
