MANILA: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he will step down if anyone can name a country that was prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic.
Duterte said this as his administration faces intense criticism over the way they handled the pandemic, according to the Philstar.com portal.
"Who was prepared for this? America? Name a country that is prepared, I will resign," he said adding that Covid-19 infections are felt globally.
"Name a country prepared for the pandemic, the spread of the virus and I will resign as President," he said in a broadcast on Monday.
Duterte said Covid-19 fatalities in the Philippines, numbering more than 33,000, is still lower compared to other countries.
He also said the government has to recalibrate its pandemic response, noting more than 22,000 Covid-19 cases were recorded on Aug 30, the highest single-day tally.
"Although we have seen the positive effect of the recent ECQ (enhanced community quarantine) in NCR (National Capital Region), which lowered the reproduction rate, we are also evaluating whether granular or localised lockdowns would work best in our current situation. The national task force has to study it," Duterte said.
"You know when the pandemic started, we had nothing. We had no face mask, personal protective equipment, testing kits, nothing.
"The same people criticising today are the same people telling us last year that we were too slow and we're not prepared," he said.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) maintained there is no evidence yet that Covid-19 can spread through "airborne transmission."
"The evidence we have is that the Delta variant, although more transmissible, is still largely transmitted in aerosols. It's not an airborne transmission," WHO representative to the Philippines Rabindra Abeyasinghe said.