The Philippines on Wednesday logged 500 new COVID-19 cases as the country maintained its status as the worst place to be during the pandemic for the 3rd straight month according to Bloomberg's Resilience Ranking.
The day's tally brought active cases to 15,327, with a total of 951 new recoveries and 167 new deaths reported.
Since the start of the pandemic, the Philippines has reported a total of 2,833,038 COVID-19 cases of which 2,768,999 recovered and 48,712 died.
Metro Manila will remain under Alert Level 2, the second lowest classification under a five-step system, until Dec. 15 even as the world races to contain the new Omicron variant.
The Philippines stayed in the last place out of 53 economies becauase as the Omicron variant loomed, it had given out less than 100 COVID shots per 100 people, Bloomberg said.
Despite the decline in daily cases, vaccination remains a hurdle: the country was reported to administer only 73.2 doses per 100 people, with vaccine hesitancy and supply being the biggest challenges.
President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the government's pandemic response task force to study the need to impose stricter COVID-19 protocols in response to the threat of the new variant.
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