The COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines was a part of the coronavirus disease 2019 () worldwide pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). As of , there have been reported cases and 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, involving a 38-year-old Chinese woman at San Lazaro Hospital in Metro Manila. On February 1, 2020, a posthumous test result from a 44-year-old Chinese man returned positive for the virus, making the Philippines the first country outside China to record a confirmed death from the disease.
After over a month without recording any cases, the Philippines confirmed its first local transmission on March 7, 2020. The virus subsequently spread to every province in the country. National and local governments imposed community quarantines after March 15, 2020, to limit the spread of the virus, including the Luzon-wide enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) from March to May 2020. On March 24, President Rodrigo Duterte signed the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act, granting him additional powers to handle the pandemic. This was repealed by the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act, which he signed on September 11.
The Philippines had a slightly lower testing capacity than its Southeast Asian neighbors during the first months of the pandemic. By the end of January 2020, the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) in Muntinlupa, Metro Manila became the country's first COVID-19 testing laboratory; before this, samples had to be sent to Australia for testing. The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) has since accredited 279 laboratories as capable of detecting the SARS-CoV-2 virus. As of September 10, 2021, 277 of these laboratories conducted 19,742,325 tests from over 18,551,810 unique individuals.
In February 2022, COVID-19 cases throughout the country started to decline, and by May 2022 the DOH 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 had 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 February 23, 2023, a total of 170,545,638 vaccine doses were administered. On July 22, 2023, President Bongbong Marcos lifted the COVID-19 pandemic as a state of public health emergency.
On June 14, 2024, a Reuters exposé revealed the United States had launched a clandestine campaign in the Philippines at the height of the pandemic to undermine China's inoculation, vaccine, face masks, and testing kits. Its purpose was to counter China's growing sphere of influence in the country under the Duterte administration. The Philippines' DOH expressed the need for further investigations into the matter. A subsequent Reuters report found that the Embassy of China in Manila hired a local marketing firm to conduct a covert astroturfing social media campaign which included promoting CoronaVac in the country.
Timeline
January to February 2020 The Philippines reported its first suspected COVID-19 case in January 2020; it involved a 5-year-old boy in Cebu who arrived in the country on January 12 with his mother. At that time, the Philippines could not conduct COVID-19 tests. The boy tested positive for "non-specific pancoronavirus assay" at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM). Samples from the boy were also sent to the Victorian Infectious Disease Reference Laboratory in Melbourne, Australia, to determine the specific coronavirus strain. The boy's COVID-19 test came back negative, but by that time, several suspected cases had been reported in various parts of the country.
The RITM developed the capability to confirm COVID-19 cases in response to the emergence of suspected cases and began conducting confirmatory tests on January 30, 2020.
The first case of COVID-19 in the Philippines was confirmed on the same day. The diagnosed patient was a 38-year-old Chinese woman from Wuhan, who had arrived in Manila from Hong Kong on January 21. She was admitted to the San Lazaro Hospital in Manila on January 25 after seeking a consultation due to a mild cough. At the time of the confirmation announcement, the woman was already asymptomatic.
The second case was confirmed on February 2, a 44-year-old Chinese male who was the companion of the first case. He was coinfected with influenza and Streptococcus pneumoniae. His death on February 1 was the first due to COVID-19 recorded outside China.
On February 5, the Philippines Department of Health (DOH) confirmed a third case in a 60-year-old Chinese woman who flew into Cebu City from Hong Kong on January 20. She then traveled to Bohol, where she consulted a doctor at a private hospital on January 22 due to fever and rhinitis. Samples taken from the patient on January 24 returned negative, but the DOH was notified on February 3 that samples taken on January 23 tested positive for the virus. The patient recovered on January 31 and was allowed to return to China.
March 2020
After a month of reporting no new cases, the DOH announced on March 6 that there were two cases involving two Filipinos. One was a 48-year-old man with a travel history in Japan that returned on February 25 and reported symptoms on March 3. The other was a 60-year-old man with a history of hypertension and diabetes who experienced symptoms on February 25 and was admitted to a hospital on March 1 when he experienced pneumonia. The DOH confirmed that the fifth case had no travel history outside the Philippines and was, therefore, the first case of local transmission. A sixth case was later confirmed in a 59-year-old woman who was married to the fifth case. Since then, the Department of Health recorded a continuous increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in the country.
Cases abroad involving foreigners with travel history in the Philippines were reported in early March 2020. The first three recorded cases involving an Australian, a Japanese, and a Taiwanese national had a history of visiting the Philippines in February 2020. Though it was unconfirmed whether or not they had contracted the virus while in the Philippines, speculations arose of undetected local transmissions in the country due to prior confirmation of the Philippines' first case of local transmission.
Retrospective studies have been conducted to determine the strain of the virus responsible for the community outbreak of COVID-19 in the Philippines since March 2020. In May 2020, Edsel Salvaña, director of the National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology and member of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID), said that the strain responsible for the COVID-19 outbreak in the country that started in March 2020 was closely related to the strain affecting India at the time. The virus strain's family tree was said by Salvaña to have first appeared in China and Australia.
Several measures were implemented to mitigate the spread of the disease in the country, including travel bans to mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and South Korea. On March 7, 2020, the Department of Health raised its "Code Red Sub-Level 1", with a recommendation to the President of the Philippines to impose a "public health emergency" authorizing the DOH to mobilize resources for the procurement of safety gear and the imposition of preventive quarantine measures. On March 9, President Rodrigo Duterte issued Proclamation No. 922, declaring the country under a state of public health emergency.
On March 12, President Duterte declared "Code Red Sub-Level 2", issuing a partial lockdown on Metro Manila for 30 days to prevent the nationwide spread of COVID-19. The lockdowns were expanded on March 16, placing the entirety of Luzon under an "enhanced community quarantine" (ECQ). Other local governments outside Luzon followed in implementing similar lockdowns. On March 17, President Duterte issued Proclamation No. 929, declaring the Philippines under a state of calamity for a tentative period of six months.
On March 20, four facilities, namely the Southern Philippines Medical Center in Davao City, Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City, Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center in Benguet, and the San Lazaro Hospital in Manila (where the first case was admitted), began conducting tests alongside the RITM. Other facilities began operations as well in the following days.
On March 25, the President signed the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act, which gave him additional powers to handle the outbreak.
April to May 2020
By April 6, COVID-19 was determined to have spread to all 17 regions of the Philippines with the confirmation of a patient confined at a hospital in Surigao City who had been in the Caraga region since March 12 after traveling from Manila.
On April 7, President Duterte accepted the recommendation of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases to extend the ECQ in Luzon until April 30.
On April 17, Dr. Ted Herbosa, a special adviser of the National Task Force Against COVID-19, said that the country had been able to bring down the viral disease's reproduction number from 1.5 to 0.65, meaning that the average number of people a person could infect decreased from more than one to less than one. Recent data at the time suggested that the country was doing better in "flattening the curve", but Herbosa warned of a "resurgence" and said the Philippines must ramp up mass testing in order to isolate cases and avoid further transmission of COVID-19.
In late April, local government units (LGUs) were no longer authorized to impose quarantine measures without the IATF-EID's consent. Before that period, LGUs could impose such measures in coordination with the Department of the Interior and Local Government.
The ECQ in Luzon was extended until May 15 in some areas, including Metro Manila, Calabarzon, Central Luzon (except Aurora), Pangasinan, and Benguet. ECQ measures were also extended in the provinces of Iloilo and Cebu, as well as in Davao City. The rest of the country was placed under general community quarantine (GCQ).
On May 14, Typhoon Vongfong (local name: Ambo) landed on Samar Island. Tens of thousands of people under lockdown orders evacuated their homes, complicating COVID-19 containment efforts. To prevent the spread of coronavirus, shelters in the central Philippines only accepted half of their maximum capacity; masks were required when evacuating. By the time the typhoon landed in the Philippines, the number of confirmed COVID-19 infections was 11,618, with 772 deaths. Vongfong also approached Manila, but due to severe restrictions on going out, most people, including low-income residents living in houses not designed to withstand typhoons, could not reach shelters and were forced to wait at home. In Metro Manila, the typhoon blew away many makeshift tents used as triage centers, testing facilities, and wards.
After May 15, the Philippine government revised its quarantine classifications to apply a modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) to Metro Manila, Laguna and Cebu City, while a GCQ was applied to 41 provinces and 10 cities with moderate risk. 40 provinces and 11 cities considered "low risk" were initially released from community quarantine measures, but were eventually upgraded to a "modified general community quarantine" (MGCQ) after requests from LGUs.
On May 14, the Philippine government declared the entire country temporarily under GCQ except for Metro Manila, Laguna and Cebu City, which continued to implement MECQ. The IATF-EID also reportedly considered the reclassification of provinces and cities in Central Luzon as "high-risk areas" under MECQ.