status of pandemic in the philippines

So, What Is Happening? The Pandemic In The Philippines By The Numbers So Far

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Statistics to give you context to the pandemic in the Philippines.

In over a year, a lot has happened in the Philippines due to the pandemic. Here are some facts and stats you should be aware of.

What initially started out as just a mysterious virus that was causing people in China to get sick turned out to be the worst global pandemic in decades. No country was spared by COVID-19 and the Philippines is no exception. With everything going on in the news like record cases and the roll out of vaccines, it may be hard to fully understand what has happened in the past year or so. Here are then some numbers that you should be aware of when it comes to the pandemic in the Philippines.

Related: So, You Want To Party Amid A Pandemic? Don’t.

450

That is how many days it has been since COVID-19 was first detected in the Philippines.

January 20, 2020, was when the first case of COVID-19 was reported in the country.

395

That is how many days it has been since the country was put on lockdown.

Announced on March 12, 2020, the government mandated that the country was going into lockdown on March 15, 2020 to stop the spread of COVID-19. Ever since then, Metro Manila has been under some form of lockdown from EQC to GCQ.

27

That is the ranking of the Philippines in terms of countries with the most COVID-19 cases.

As of April 14, 2021, the country ranks behind Belgium with over 927k cases and after Sweden with over 876k cases.

892,880

That is how many cases of COVID-19 the country has recorded until today, April 14, 2021.

Philippines reports record 7,999 new COVID-19 infections | Reuters

This means that around 1 in every 120 Filipinos has tested positive for COVID-19. This amount puts the country just second to Indonesia in terms of the highest amount of cases in Southeast Asia.

15,447

That is how many people have died of COVID-19 as of April 14, 2021.

Around 1 in every 6975 Filipinos have died from COVID-19. This number puts the country second to Indonesia in terms of the highest death toll in Southeast Asia. There is a chance that the actual death toll is higher since some people who had COVD-19 may have died at their homes instead of the hospital and their death was not reported.

1

That is the percentage of the population of the Philippines that have received at least one vaccine shot.

Ever since the first vaccines arrived in the country in late February, 1,093,651 people have received a vaccine shot as of April 13, 2021. In order to achieve herd immunity, 70 million Filipinos need to get vaccinated.

0.15

That is the percentage of the population of the Philippines who have been fully vaccinated.

162,065 people have received their second dose as of April 13, 2021. This amounts to a little under 15% of people who have received a vaccine.

5

That is how many years it will take for the Philippines to achieve herd immunity through vaccines.

Based on the current rate the country is going, it is estimated that country will achieve herd immunity through vaccines in around 5 years.

2,500,000,000

That is how much readily available money there is in the national budget to buy vaccines.

In the 2021 national budget, only 2.5 billion pesos in immediate cash were allocated for vaccine purchases. Another 70 billion pesos is to be used to buy vaccines, but those funds have been placed in an unprogrammed fund and can only be used until the government funds it through loans.

23%

That is how much the budget cut is for the Department of Health in 2021.

Over 40 billion pesos was cut from the budget of DOH from 2020 to 2021. Not all government entities saw budget cuts though as NTF-ELCAC, which has been known to red-tag activists and other critics of the government, saw a 2974% increase in budget to P19.5 billion while the DPWH had a 58% increase, or 255 billion pesos, in the budget for their infrastructure projects.

9.5%

That is how much the GDP of the Philippines dropped in 2020.

The last time the country saw a big drop like this was during the final years of the Marcos dictatorship. The nearly 10% drop made the Philippines the worst performing country economically in all of South East Asia in 2020.

4,500,000,000

That is how many people are unemployed in the country.

From 2019 to 2020, the number of unemployed people in the country nearly doubled from 2.3 million to 4.5 million. Some experts believe that this number is an underestimation of the actual number of unemployed people, and it could be as high as double the official count.

38,000,000,000

That is how much unspent money is in the Bayanihan 2 funds.

When the Bayanihan 2 Bill was signed into law last year, it allocated over 165 billion pesos to boost the government’s pandemic response. The law says that all the money must be spent by December 2020, however over 25% of the fund has yet to be spent. Because of this, lawmakers have extended its validity until June 2021.

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