WHO worked closely with the Department of Health (DOH) and subnational authorities on a multi-sectoral, multi-pronged response in the 100 days after the first person tested positive for COVID-19 in the Philippines.
By providing targeted support to national and some subnational government authorities, the Philippines strengthened its response in the areas of: surveillance, contact tracing, infection prevention and control (IPC), laboratory and therapeutics access, clinical care, non-pharmaceutical interventions and mental health, risk communication and community engagement, logistics support, subnational operations support, and responding to outbreaks in high risk areas.
WHO’s efforts and support ranged from the procedural -such as combing through all available information sources with the DOH to guide decision-making in the context of a new, unpredictable virus which triggers non-specific symptoms- to tackling specific challenges, like working with DOH’s Epidemiology Bureau to develop COVID KAYA, a case and contact tracing reporting system designed to overcome bottlenecks in the provision of timely and complete reporting of suspected, probable and confirmed cases.
Read more about WHO’s response to COVID-19