With a “super slow” rollout and delivery of Covid-19 vaccines, many local officials now fear that the country may not reach enough “herd immunity” for the country to go back to normal by next year.
SOME local officials, as well as health experts, are now worrying that the Philippines may not reach its target of herd immunity against Covid-19 due to what they described as a “slow” rollout of vaccines.
Midway into 2021, only about 2.03 million Filipinos had been inoculated, way below the target of 58 million to 70 million for the country to achieve herd immunity.
This, despite the fact that 7.07 million vaccines have already been delivered into the country.
One telltale sign is the recent downgrading of its expectations – from 70 million by November, to about 25 million by Christmas.
(See also: Gov’t revises vax goal, aims for more realistic 25-M inoculated by Christmas )
Vaccine czar Sec. Carlito Galvez, Jr. had claimed that the 25 million figure, which will compose of the more vulnerable sectors, is the most realistic by far.
The current statistics, forwarded by the Department of Health (DOH) itself, are by far discouraging: only 2,538,693 shots had been administered nationwide, or about 32 percent of the total vaccine shots available in the country.
Only about three-fourths of the 1.5 million health workers had received at least one jab while 23 percent were still not vaccinated, many of them outside Metro Manila.
Only 6 percent of senior citizens out of the target of 7.7 million received a COVID-19 shot, the official said.
Frustration
In a rare public criticism, Manila City Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso slammed government officials for delays in the distribution of vaccines to his city.
In a statement Tuesday (May 11), Domagoso said that vaccines allocated to the city either did not arrive or were delivered late.
He also said Manila has yet to get its share of the 1.5 million Sinovac doses that arrived in the country on May 7.
“There must be somebody who’s going to be liable because if you believe that vaccination is the solution to restart the economy, to bring back normalcy to people’s lives, the vaccines should not be stored for so long in different warehouses,” Domagoso added.
The mayor on Wednesday said the city would resume its vaccinations after it finally received 45,000 doses of AstraZeneca and 7,020 shots of Pfizer vaccines. (ONT)
Tags: #Covid19, #Covid19vaccines, #DepartmentOfHealth, #herdimmunity