Filipinos may have a hard time remembering her name, but they will not have forgotten Dr Maria Rosario Singh-Vergeire’s face. It is the same face that gave us Covid-19 updates during the entirety of the pandemic, broadcast daily starting at around 4pm. The undersecretary of the Department of Health served concurrently as the government agency's spokesperson, which meant that she had some very difficult responsibilities: parrying blows directed at then-DOH secretary Francisco Duque III or the DOH itself, addressing the fake news that circulated via social media, and correcting false information (which sometimes came from Duque himself, or from other government officials)

Those two years or so of the pandemic were the most hectic for Singh-Vergeire, whose calm delivery belied her harried pace, and her apprehension as a non-clinical doctor tasked with disseminating information about a virus that even the most experienced medical practitioners and scientists knew little about.

In July 2022 President Bongbong Marcos added more responsibilities to Singh-Vergeire's mandate, naming her the DOH officer in charge.