The Department of Health (DOH) said it never lost its focus in responding to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic-----as the Philippines remained at the bottom of an international report in terms of resilience and response to the current health crisis.

DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said that the country's response against the pandemic has already improved since it hit the country last year.

“Hindi po kami nagpapabaya sa ating response. We just want to tell everybody, mula’t mula pa nakita natin kung paano nag improve ang state ng ating pandemic response (We are not neglecting our response. We just want to tell everybody, we have seen that the state of our pandemic response has improved),” said Vergeire on Friday, Oct. 29.

“From just one laboratory, we now have almost 300 laboratories. From just one quarantine facility, we have now more than 100,000 beds. Yung bakuna (In terms of vaccination), we were just averaging 300 vaccines or jabs per day, we are now averaging almost 600,000 jabs per day,” she added.

She also emphasized that the Philippines’ “case fatality rate has been lower than the global case fatality rate for so long already.”

The DOH was reacting in the latest Covid Resilience Ranking by Bloomberg---- where the Philippines fell to the bottom among the 53 countries included in the rank list.

“The Philippines remains bottom of Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking of the best and worst places to be amid the pandemic in October, as vaccinations and reopening lag despite its outbreak easing,” the Bloomberg report stated.

“While other Southeast Asian nations also continue to be ranked low among the 53 economies tracked, the Philippines fares among the worst on vaccine coverage, with just 26% of the population covered amid challenges in bringing shots to areas outside of the big cities,” it added.

Vergeire said that the Delta variant did not hit the countries all at the same time.

“Hindi po naging pare-pareho sa bawat bansa ang pagdating ng Delta variant or pag peak ng mga number of cases (The detection of the Delta variant or the peak of the number of cases has not been the same in every country),” she said.

“You'd find that as early as May, other countries were overwhelmed already by this Delta variant, nung dumating po sa atin at tumaas ang kaso ito nalang pong period na nag aanayze na sila (when it came to us and our case increased, it was the period that they were conducting an analysis),” she added.

However, Vergeire noted that they are open to such reports.

“These researches and analysis being done, bukas naman tayo lagi. And actually pag tiningnan natin nakakapulot naman tayo ng mga ways to improve kapag tiningnan natin yung mga pag-aaral (we are always open. And actually when we look at it, we can also find ways on how to improve when we look at these studies),” she said.