DAVAO CITY—A high-ranking World Bank (WB) official has cited as “in a good pace” the anti-Covid-19 vaccination program of the Philippines, placing it way much ahead of many Asian and the Pacific countries to mitigate the ravages of the resurging Covid-19 infection currently triggered by the Delta, or Indian variant.
Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, who held an online meeting with Victoria Kwakwa, the WB Regional Vice President for East Asia and the Pacific, quoted the latter as saying that Philippines’s Covid-19 vaccination program was “picking up” its pace this quarter and that the country was “now in a good place compared to certain other economies in the region struggling to ramp up their capacities to inoculate their populations against the deadly virus.”
“I think you are in a good place with your vaccination program and I hope it continues,” Kwakwa said.
She expressed hope that the pace of the Philippines’s vaccination rollout would continue “to enable it to achieve its target of immunizing 100 percent of its adult population this year.”
Vice President Kwakwa expressed concern, however, with fate of other countries with the more contagious Covid-19 Delta variant spreading across the globe, saying that other countries in Asia “may experience surges as they have either been late in procuring the vaccines or are slow in vaccinating their citizens.”
Dominguez reported that from a low of less than 3 million vaccine doses received by the Philippines in the first quarter of this year, the volume has since increased to some 25 million doses in the April- to-June period.
He told Vice President Kwakwa that a much bigger delivery of about 70 million vaccine doses is expected this third quarter, and more than 50 million doses in the last quarter of the year. “All these procured vaccines are enough to inoculate more than 100 percent of the country’s population,” he told the WB executive.
Dominguez also said the Philippines “has been fast and efficient in vaccinating its citizens.”
The Department of Finance said that during the meeting, “Vice President Kwakwa also thanked Secretary Dominguez, and other senior officials of the Department of Finance for their strong collaboration with the WB, which has resulted in the Bank’s largest program this year for the Philippines, amounting to about $3.1 billion.”
Image courtesy of PNA/Leilanie G. Adriano