Reuters
After the Philippines recorded its first death from Covid-19 on February 1 last year, President Rodrigo Duterte assured Filipinos: “Everything is well … there is really nothing to be scared of that coronavirus thing.”
The victim – the first person to die of the disease outside China – was a 44-year old man visiting from Wuhan, the Chinese city where the first novel coronavirus infections were reported. By then, countries around the world including Russia , Japan and Australia had closed or were about to close their borders to arrivals from China , but Duterte scoffed at calls for him to do the same.
“China has been kind to us, and we can only show the same favour to them”, he said, in keeping with his policy since taking office in 2016 of building closer ties with Beijing while moving away from traditional ally the United States .