COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines

The COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines was a part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). As of March 12, 2026, there have been 4,173,631 reported cases and 66,864 reported deaths, the fifth highest in Southeast Asia, behind Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.

The first case in the Philippines was identified on January 30, 2020, involving a 38-year-old Chinese woman at San Lazaro Hospital in Metro Manila. On February 1, 2020, a posthumous test result from a 44-year-old Chinese man returned positive for the virus, making the Philippines the first country outside China to record a confirmed death from the disease.

After over a month without recording any cases, the Philippines confirmed its first local transmission on March 7, 2020. The virus subsequently spread to every province in the country. National and local governments imposed community quarantines after March 15, 2020, to limit the spread of the virus, including the Luzon-wide enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) from March to May 2020. On March 24, President Rodrigo Duterte signed the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act, granting him additional powers to handle the pandemic. This was repealed by the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act, which he signed on September 11.

The Philippines had a slightly lower testing capacity than its neighbors in Southeast Asia during the first months of the pandemic. By the end of January 2020, the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) in Muntinlupa, Metro Manila became the country's first COVID-19 testing laboratory; before this, samples had to be sent to Australia for testing. The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) has since accredited 279 laboratories as capable of detecting the SARS-CoV-2 virus. As of September 10, 2021, 277 of these conducted 19,742,325 tests from over 18,551,810 unique individuals.

In February 2022, COVID-19 cases throughout the country started to decline, and by May 2022 the DOH noted that the country was at "minimal-risk case classification," with an average of only 159 cases per day recorded from May 3 to 9. As of early June 2022, 69.4 million Filipinos had been fully vaccinated, while 14.3 million individuals received their booster shots. In August 2022, Filipino public schools reopened for in-person learning for the first time in two years. As of February 23, 2023, a total of 170,545,638 vaccine doses were administered. On July 22, 2023, President Bongbong Marcos lifted the COVID-19 pandemic as a state of public health emergency.

On June 14, 2024, a Reuters exposé revealed the United States had launched a clandestine campaign in the Philippines at the height of the pandemic to undermine China's inoculation―vaccine, face masks, and testing kits. Its purpose was to counter China's growing sphere of influence in the country under the Duterte administration. The Philippines' DOH expressed the need for further investigations into the matter. A subsequent Reuters report found that the Embassy of China in Manila hired a local marketing firm to conduct a covert astroturfing social media campaign which included promoting CoronaVac in the country.