The Philippines’ pandemic response has significantly improved in November 2021 versus the previous month, amid the implementation of alert levels, faster vaccine rollout and a balancing in terms of economic recovery, according to a government scorecard released by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).
Rosemarie Edillon, NEDA undersecretary, said in a virtual briefing yesterday the Philippines’ overall score in the National Act Plan (NAP) 4 scorecard is 6.98, which is closer to the perfect score of nine.
In comparison, the scores in the previous months were 4.9 in October and 4.42 in September.
The NAP 4 scorecard is being compiled by the recovery cluster of the national task force against COVID-19.
In terms of indicators, which each had a perfect score of three, the scores for infection management and vaccine rollout improved, to 2.82 from 1.44, and to 1.72 from 1.28, respectively.
The economic recovery indicator likewise showed improvement to 2.44 from 2.19 in October.
“For November, we saw a significant increase. It was a very, very good (month in terms of) infection management. Take note that this was the time that we shifted policies to having granular lockdowns and alert levels, the vaccine rollout, towards the end of November that was the vaccination day. And then in terms of the economic recovery, we had a balancing,” Edillon said.
Edillon said while better numbers are expected in December, there may be some reduction in January amid the surge in active cases due to the threat brought by the Omicron variant.
“We are still battling the Omicron but we are more confident now actually that since we have been here before and we know that this is something that we can weather,” Edillon said.
Meanwhile, Edillon said with respect to the growth target for the year, it’s still too early to consider revisions, even with the increase in alert levels in many areas due to the surge in cases.
“There’s still a lot of developments that can happen, hopefully very positive developments at that. It’s still early days to be discussing about revising the growth targets and we think there’s still enough time to catch up,” Edillon said.
