The country’s coronavirus situation is “not as bad” as those of other nations like the United States given the government’s “very good” job so far in containing the outbreak, Malacañang said Wednesday.

According to presidential spokesman Harry Roque, the government remained on the right track in managing the health situation despite the country’s limited resources and high population density.

"Relative to the rest of the world, you know we are in number 22 but we're not as bad as countries that we consider as role models including the United States, which now has the highest number of cases and the highest number of deaths," Roque said over CNN Philippines Wednesday.

"Even with countries of our own size like Brazil, which is now number two or three worldwide, we are still doing a lot better," he added.

The country has recorded a jump in the cases of coronavirus infections in recent days despite prevailing lockdown measures.

Based on the tracking done by Johns Hopkins University, the country is currently ranked 22nd in the global tally of coronavirus cases. The Philippines has recently overtaken Indonesia in having the highest COVID-19 cases in Southeast Asia.

As of August 11, the country has logged 139,538 cases of infections with 2,312 deaths.

Roque said the government is exerting its best to limit the spread of the coronavirus, citing increased healthcare capacity to detect, isolate, and treat people with the illness.

The country now has more than a hundred testing laboratories with coronavirus tests reaching 32,000 per day. The strict coronavirus lockdown earlier imposed by the government has also prevented 3.5 million cases of infections last June, according to Roque.

"No country in the world is perfect in dealing with the coronavirus and I would say we've done very good so far in containing it and more so in limiting the deaths from coronavirus," Roque said.

"We recognize that there is a continuing community transmission and I'd like to point out that we've actually done a good job at containing it somehow given that we have the highest population density in Southeast Asia. I'm talking of Metro Manila in particular," he said.

If the COVID-19 cases are computed on a per million basis, Roque claimed that Singapore would still rank number one with 4,000 cases per million. "In the Philippines, we're not bad although we're second but it's a far second of a 1,000 plus more or less per million so I'd say we are doing the right thing," he said.

Roque defended the government's pandemic response after Senator Risa Hontiveros raised the alarm about the country's record-high daily increase in infections. Hontiveros said the recent case surge should serve as a wake-up call for the government to implement a "health-heavy" response to contain the virus spread.