Athletes should also be included in the government’s A4 priority list, some sports officials say, as the dates draw near for international sporting events that will be held amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
A little over two months away from the Olympic Qualifying Tournament, Senator Francis Tolentino proposed to the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases to include Filipino athletes in the government’s priority list for Covid-19 vaccines.
The senator made the appeal on Sunday (May 9) as athletes are still excluded in the A4 priority list, which include frontline workers.
The Olympic will be held from July 23 to August 8 while the Hanoi South East Asian Games will be on November 21 to December 3.
Tolentino also revealed that athletes competing for the Hanoi SEA Games have yet to train simultaneously with a total of 626 athletes identified for Team Philippines.
“The athletes should also be prioritized as sports development should be part of the post-pandemic recovery process,” Tolentino said. “The physical well-being of our athletes is reflective of the health of the nation.”
Athletes who qualified for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics include weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz, gymnast Carlos Yulo, pole vaulter EJ Obiena and boxers Eumir Felix Marcial, Nesthy Petecio, Carlo Paalam and Irish Magno.
Some of the athletes have received their vaccination outside of the country, including Marcial received his two doses of the Pfizer vaccine in the United States and Diaz, who received her first dose in Malaysia.
Philippine Olympic Committee President Rep. Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino has announced earlier that sports tycoon Enrique Razon pledged Moderna vaccines for the Philippine Olympic delegation, including administrative staff and media, but the vaccination program has yet to proceed.
“The vaccines are in transit [for Olympics-bound athletes], but the problem is that all of our Olympic-bound athletes are training abroad,” Bambol Tolentino said.
“We will try to contact our counterparts if it is possible to include our athletes in their countries’ vaccination program.” he added.
Tolentino also allotted a $40,000 grant from the Olympic Council of Asia for the inoculation of the SEA Games-bound athletes.
Yulo and Obiena have been training in Japan and Italy, respectively, for more than a year now while Marcial, Petecio, Paalam, and Magno are in Thailand. (NP)
Tags: #PhilippineOlympicCommittee, #sports, #Covid19, #Covid19vaccine