Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 30) — The World Health Organization said it never made a comment comparing the Philippines to other countries as far as COVID-19 cases are concerned.
World Health Organization Representative to the Philippines Dr. Rabindra Abeyasinghe said at the Laging Handa briefing on Tuesday that “It is unfair to say that WHO made that comment or assessment. We did not.”
“The World Health Organization actually has a dashboard with the numbers of cases, what happened was a journalist…used that dashboard and interpreted it this way. It’s not the World Health Organization that did this,” he added.
Last week, the Department of Health issued a statement over reports which said the country had the fastest rise in COVID-19 cases in the Western Pacific.
“Our socioeconomic context, particularly living conditions, as well as health system capacity, even prior to COVID, is different from Singapore,” Health Undersecretary and Spokesperson Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a statement. “Please take that into account when we do our analysis. Let us not cherry pick the countries we want to compare ourselves to.”
The Department of Health said Sunday that the comparison made with Singapore and other countries requires a deeper understanding of population ratio versus number of cases.
In Tuesday’s televised briefing, Abeyasinghe also explained that the WHO does not compare countries’ COVID-19 cases.
The DOH has not issued a statement on Abeyasinghe’s comment.
