COVID-19 mortality and government response in the Philippines

ABSTRACT Objective: Global response to the COVID-19 pandemic involved the use of public health and social measures (PHSMs) to control and prevent the spread of the virus. The Philippines has adopted these measures during different stages of the pandemic. The objective of this study is to analyze the association of these measures with reported COVID-19 mortality rates. Methods: The study used an analytical cross-sectional document review study design. We used the Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker database for the Philippines from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2022. The database included 16 policy measures with varying strictness of implementation. We calculated the daily growth of mortality rate based on 6 lag periods representing the lag in effect of the PHSMs at 14, 28, 42, 56, 70 and 84 days. We used multivariate logistic regression models for each lag period to calculate the beta coefficients for each PHSM. Results: Only restrictions on internal movement showed persistent significant negative growth of mortality rates across multiple lag times. Cancelation of public events showed a significant negative growth in mortality rate but only after 84 days. Policies which showed significant positive growth in mortality rate in at least one lag period include protection of elderly people, vaccination policies, restrictions of gathering size, closure of public transport and public information campaign. Policies on school closure, workplace closure, stay-at-home requirements, restriction on international travel, income support, debt/contract relief for households, testing policy, contact tracing and facial coverings showed no statistically significant effect across all lag times. Discussion: Our findings show the implementation of PHSMs in the Philippines is associated with mixed effects on COVID-19 mortality rates, similar to studies from other countries. These suggest that the effectiveness of PHSMs is highly time- and context-specific, and more granular studies on localized policy implementation should be conducted.