A Philippine National Situationer on the COVID-19 Pandemic Micah Hanah S. Orlino and Karl Hapal On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) due to the growing number of infected cases of a new disease caused by a novel coronavirus (NCoV),¹ now known as COVID-19.2 Chinese health authorities confirmed the existence of the virus and its origin in the Chinese city of Wuhan on January 9, 2020. Soon after, the WHO received reports of cases in places outside China. In less than a month, the number of these cases reached 98 in 18 countries alone, but with no reported deaths. Three weeks after, the WHO declared the spread of NCoV infections as very high in China, high at the regional level, and high at the global level (WHO 2020b). In the Philippines, the first case of COVID-19 was recorded on January 20, 2020. The next two confirmed cases were reported in the first week of February 2020. All three were labelled as imported cases since all involved Chinese nationals with a history of travelling from Wuhan. On March 5, 2020, local transmission of the disease was recorded by the Department of Health (DOH), resulting in the raising of COVID-19 Alert System to Code Red Sublevel 1. Two weeks after, President Rodrigo Duterte declared a state of calamity in the country and imposed an enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), restricting all movements to prevent the spread of the virus. The quarantine was originally a month-long measure that was supposed to end on April 12, 2020 (DOH 2020a; WHO 2020b). After almost eight months, however, and despite being placed under different levels of community quarantine, the number of active cases in the country continues to increase dramatically. The cumulative number of confirmed cases as of October 12, 2020 has reached 342,816 with 6,332 deaths and 293,152 recoveries (see Table 1 on the next page). 1 The virus is now named as the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2. 2 COVID-19 stands for coronavirus disease 2019. 7