ABOUT 9 out of 10 Filipinos prefer to be inoculated with United States and United Kingdom-made vaccines if given the chance to choose, a regional survey revealed.
On Wednesday, the Asean+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO) published the findings of its recently conducted survey on vaccination views across the region.
The survey revealed that the Philippine respondents have the most favorable views on the three groups of US and UK made vaccines: Pfizer/BioNTech; Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Novavax; and Oxford/AstraZeneca.
In contrast, Filipinos are also one of the least approving of China-made vaccines CanSino Biologics, Sinopharm, Sinovac and the Russia manufactured Gamaleya Spuntik-V in the region.
Data from AMRO’s survey showed that 40.5 percent of Filipinos preferred Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. This is the highest preference rate for the Pfizer/BioNTech brand in the region. In particular, 40 percent of the people from Hong Kong, 36.3 percent of Singapore residents and 36.1 percent of Indonesians indicated preference to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
Overall, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was by far the single most preferred product in most of the regional locations surveyed.
Meanwhile, about 25.4 percent of Filipino respondents indicated preference for US-made vaccines like Johnson & Johnson, Moderna and Novavax. This is also the highest preference rate across the region for this group of vaccines. Following this is Hong Kong, with 25 percent of residents indicating preference for this group of vaccines, Japan at 24.2 percent and Singapore residents at 23 percent.
About 28 percent of Filipino respondents preferred Oxford/AstraZeneca, which is still the highest in the region. Japan has the second highest percentage of the population that preferred the UK-made vaccine with 27.3 percent of its population, followed by Hong Kong with 25 percent and Myanmar at 23.8 percent.
On the other hand, Filipino respondents were least approving of China-made vaccines. Only about 1.5 percent of the Filipino respondents said they prefer CanSino Biologics, Sinopharm and Sinovac. This is the second lowest in preference rate in the region next only to Japan, where no one in their respondent group indicated preference to either CanSino Biologics, Sinopharm or Sinovac.
The Philippines is also the country with the smallest percentage of people who indicated that “anything made available will do” for their vaccination. In particular, only 2.7 percent of the Filipino survey respondents said “anything made available will do.” This is small compared to others: Hong Kong’s percentage of people who believe “anything made available will do” for their vaccine is at 5 percent, followed by Singapore residents at 16 percent. This is in contrast with Lao with 38.8 percent and Vietnam with 33.3 percent.
Image credits: AP/Aaron Favila