A Philippine National Situationer on the COVID-19 Pandemic 13 huge improvement compared to when the crisis began in March 2020. Nonetheless, the ramping up of testing capacity and actual tests conducted remains slow given that the government targeted to conduct 30,000 tests per day by the end of May, and about 50,000 tests per day by the end of June. The target of 30,000 tests per day was only achieved by the end of July. The Philippines has yet to conduct 50,000 tests in a single day. In terms of contact tracing, the Philippines has yet to meet the WHOprescribed contact tracer to population ratio of 1:800. The national government, through the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), has yet to hire, train, and deploy the said number of contact tracers. Instead, it has mainly relied on the contract tracing initiatives of LGUs. This has led to inconsistent and differing practices and approaches when it comes to contact tracing. Social amelioration measures The government’s social amelioration measures are contained in the Joint Memorandum Circular ( JMC) No. 1, s. 2020 among a number of executive departments. It serves as the basis for the implementation of various social amelioration programs and provides the overall guidelines on relief and recovery from the health crisis. Moreover, this serves as the basis for the implementation of social protection programs, projects, and services to the targeted 18 million low-income families, to which an emergency subsidy ranging from Php 5,000 to 8,000 a month for two months shall be given to provide for food, medicine, and toiletries. Apart from low-income families, JMC No. 1 also identified vulnerable populations, which include senior citizens; pregnant/ lactating women; solo parents; overseas Filipinos in distress; underprivileged sectors such as homeless families, indigents, indigenous peoples and other vulnerable groups; informal or self-employed workers; employers; rice farmers; and serviceconduit borrowers. Due to the wide and multi-sectoral impact of the pandemic, the government’s response saw the need to harmonize its programs and services to effectively alleviate and mitigate the effects and socio-economic shocks brought about by the community quarantine. Table 2 (on the next page) presents a summary of the programs of various government agencies responding to various sectors or vulnerable populations in the Philippines. However, these agencies ran into problems in implementing their programs. Some of these, as identified by Aceron (2020), were related to the identification of qualified beneficiaries; gaps in disseminating information to the public; unresponsive or ineffective communication lines; and the readiness of LGUs as co-implementors of the programs. Economic impact The imposition of various quarantine measures since March 2020 has impacted heavily on the Philippine economy. For the first quarter of 2020, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported a 0.2 percent decline in the country’s gross