COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines
The COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines was a part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). As of April 20, 2024, there have been 4,140,383 reported cases, and 66,864 reported deaths, the fifth highest in Southeast Asia, behind Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The first case in the Philippines was identified on January 30, 2020, and involved a 38-year-old Chinese woman who was confined at San Lazaro Hospital in Metro Manila. On February 1, 2020, a posthumous test result from a 44-year-old Chinese man turned out positive for the virus, making the Philippines the first country outside China to record a confirmed death from the disease.
COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines | |
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Clockwise, starting from top:
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Disease | COVID-19 |
Virus strain | SARS-CoV-2 |
Location | Philippines |
First outbreak | Wuhan, Hubei, China |
Index case | Manila |
Date | First case of COVID-19: January 30, 2020 (4 years, 2 months and 3 weeks) State of public health emergency: March 9, 2020 – July 22, 2023 (3 years, 4 months, 1 week and 6 days) |
Confirmed cases | 4,140,383 |
Active cases | 7,037 |
Severe cases | 24,474 |
Critical cases | 12,118 |
Recovered | 48,021,987 |
Deaths | 66,864 |
Fatality rate | 1.61% |
Vaccinations |
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Government website | |
After over a month without recording any cases, the Philippines confirmed its first local transmission on March 7, 2020. Since then, the virus has spread to the country's 81 provinces. National and local governments have been imposing community quarantines since March 15, 2020, as a measure to limit the spread of the virus. These include the Luzon-wide enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) that was implemented in March–May 2020. On March 24, President Rodrigo Duterte signed the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act, a law that granted him additional powers to handle the pandemic. This was repealed by a follow-up law, the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act, which he signed on September 11.
The Philippines had a slightly lower testing capacity than its neighbors in Southeast Asia during the first months of the pandemic in the country. COVID-19 tests had to be taken in Australia, as the Philippines lacked testing kits. By the end of January 2020, the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) in Muntinlupa, Metro Manila began its testing operations and became the country's first testing laboratory. The DOH has since then accredited 279 laboratories that are capable of detecting the SARS-CoV-2 virus. As of September 10, 2021, 277 of these have conducted 19,742,325 tests from more than 18,551,810 unique individuals.
COVID-19 cases throughout the country started declining in February 2022, and by May 2022, the health department noted that the country was at "minimal-risk case classification" with an average of only 159 cases per day recorded from May 3 to 9. As of early June 2022, 69.4 million Filipinos have been fully vaccinated, while 14.3 million individuals received their booster shots. In August 2022, Filipino public schools reopened for in person learning for the first time in two years. As of 23 February 2023, a total of 170,545,638 vaccine doses have been administered.
On July 22, 2023, President Bongbong Marcos lifted COVID-19 pandemic as state of public health emergency.