How can Trade Secretary Lopez expect that the Philippines will ever reach a status of oversupply of vaccines when just getting the sufficient stocks necessary to achieve herd immunity is next to impossible?
A REPORT by the Philippine News Agency said Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez disagrees with the recommendation to limit the movement of unvaccinated persons amid the threats of the Delta variant of Covid-19.
In a television interview Tuesday night, Lopez said this is not yet the time to implement such a policy given the supply situation of the Covid-19 vaccines.
“That might be a good move when we reach that point that there is so much vaccine available and more supply than the demand,” he said.
By contrast other countries, richer than ours, have been limiting the movements and encouraging all unvaccinated people to get their jabs so they would not become willing spreaders of the deadly variant.
They even impose stay-at-home orders (akin to a lockdown) just to make sure that both vaccinated and unvaccinated do not intermingle or move closer to each other until most, if not all, citizens have had their vaccines.
He added this can be done in the future to encourage those unvaccinated individuals to get their Covid-19 jabs.
Even in advanced countries like the United States and UK—with their all their excess inventories of vaccines as they overstocked on this health necessity—local and national leaders are hard-pressed to convince their citizenry to get inoculated with some even giving citizens incentives to get the jabs.
How can he expect that the Philippines will ever reach a status of oversupply of vaccines when to get the stocks necessary to achieve herd immunity or people protection is next to impossible?
In Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu, an executive order was issued that requires residents to present their vaccination cards upon entering markets -- limiting the movement of those unvaccinated persons. This (denying the unvaccinated access to the markets) is the right move, the stick approach.
Due to low turnout in vaccination sites, Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Junard Chan said this policy aims to encourage their constituents to get vaccinated.
Government data show the country administered over 18 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines as of July 27.
So if 18 million doses is halved (for first and second dose recipients) then actual vaccinated population is only 9 million out of 160 million, in which case we can consider the 100 plus million as potential, if not actual, spreaders of the Delta variant.
On Tuesday, the country also reported a record-high vaccine administration of 659,029 jabs in a day.
Tags: #DepartmentOfTradeandIndustry, #Covid19, #Deltavariant, #Covid19vaccine, #restrictions