GOVERNMENT estimates about 3 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered to Filipinos, nationwide. That’s just about 2.7 percent of the country’s population, or perhaps even less, considering that individuals below 18 years old are not eligible for the jabs.
In the National Capital Region, where most of the Covid cases are concentrated, the population is close to 13 million to 14 million. According to the Department of Health, 937,824 first doses have already been administered, or just 7.2 percent of the total NCR population.
From this, we can confirm that the pace of vaccination is extremely slow. And it cannot be attributed just to vaccine hesitancy, but because government also took its sweet time in purchasing the vaccines for us. (Recall that Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro “Teddy Boy” Locsin pointed to a fellow Cabinet secretary as the cause of why Pfizer vaccines didn’t arrive in January 2021, despite his negotiations with the pharmaceutical company.)
Filipinos weren’t wary about getting Covid vaccinations due to our previous experience with Dengvaxia, but because they didn’t want to get Sinovac. And while there were AstraZeneca doses that arrived as well, these were limited and initially allocated to senior citizens.
So when news broke that the Pfizer vaccines have arrived, it was as if everyone went nuts. In many local government units, people who had no vaccine schedules suddenly showed up, cramming venues like the Ayala Malls Manila Bay, hoping for a chance at getting a Pfizer jab. Government talking heads have called these super-spreader events. But, frankly, if anyone is to blame, it’s certainly not the people who were eager to get vaccinated.
It is worth noting, dear readers, that the vaccines already in the country are still donations courtesy of other countries, not purchased by the government with our money from the taxes we pay. Sinovac was a donation from China, while AstraZeneca and Pfizer were donated by their respective pharma firms via the Covax facility of the World Health Organization. By the end of July, government will hopefully be distributing Moderna vaccines, but that would also be a donation, this time from the ICTSI Foundation that purchased them.
(By the way, many private companies like the Ayala Group, San Miguel Corp., the MVP Group, the Phinma Group, GMA Network, among others, had ordered Moderna vaccines for their employees. That seems to be one part of the Nayong Pilipino “forest” issue that has not been emphasized. These private companies and their thousands upon thousands of employees are key to reopening the economy, especially here in the NCR. That mega-vaccination center to be temporarily built on government property, would be the main hub to get the temperature-sensitive vaccine out to these employees. Other vaccine brands will also be made available via the facility.)
It’s unfortunate this is what the Philippines has been reduced to, a beggar nation. If the administration needs anything to fight this Covid-19 horror, our salvation will come from donations. The bazillions of funds government borrowed (from us and from foreign institutions) is basically just for keeping government operations afloat, since it can’t reopen the economy fast enough to collect more taxes from us.
Many economists even argue that the government needs to borrow more to finance its pandemic action plan—we assume it does have one—more efficiently. (Amid this, several government agencies are wastefully spending their budgets on extravagant, unnecessary, and downright dumb projects, with no economic benefit to the people and the country.)
Other than the hesitancy over vaccine brands, another factor that discourages more people from getting their jabs is the inconsistency of LGUs in their pronouncements. When an LGU says vaccination slots have to be reserved, then only those with reservations should be served.
In our case in Quezon City, it’s not that the reserved slots aren’t respected; it’s that the LGU doesn’t have an orderly system for residents to reserve a vaxx schedule in the first place. First, it announced that residents should get registered to the QC E-services. Then it rolled out the EZConsult app for us to get a vaxx schedule. Next thing we know, there is now a barangay-assisted vaccination registration. Yet when I checked, our barangay wasn’t even on the registration schedules list. What a clusterf*ck. Meanwhile, those who registered via their barangays were lucky to get the Pfizer vaccine. Good for them.
On Wednesday, the Department of Health told LGUs to no longer announce what vaccine brands they are administering to prevent chaos, such as what happened at the Parañaque mall. Not only does this directly contradict President Duterte’s order for government agencies and personnel to be transparent in all transactions, it also negates our human right to be properly informed of the vaccine that we will consume. (DOH Undersecretary Myrna Cabotaje should re-read government’s own national deployment and vaccination plan, which cites: “For consent to be valid, it must be informed, understood and voluntary, and the person consenting must have the capacity to do so.”)
Instead of being super-secretive about vaccine brands, DOH can speed up the distribution of vaccines, especially those that are not temperature-sensitive, via drugstores. In the US, Target is doing just that by distributing the vaccines through CVS Pharmacy (which took over the department store’s network of pharmacies). In Metro Manila, SM has about 240 Watsons branches, while Mercury Drug probably has even more. This will help declog the vaccine pipeline and get these out to the people quicker.
And so while thousands continue to perish from Covid, and a majority of us still await for our precious jabs, government continues to twiddle its thumbs, seemingly unable to move past its inefficiencies.
Image courtesy of Daniel Schludi on Unsplash
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