Philippines dismisses claims of soldiers rejecting vaccines

Claims of soldiers opposing the government’s Covid19 vaccination programme were dismissed as rumours.

Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said this when visiting the first vaccination of health workers at the V. Luna Medical Centre military hospital, according to the Inquirer.net.

“Who said that? That’s just a rumour. It’s not true,” he said and stressed, on the sidelines during the visit on Monday, that soldiers were trained to take orders.

“If you tell them get vaccinated, they’ll get vaccinated.

“It’s not true that many are complaining,” Lorenzana said.

A total of 100,000 out of 600,000 doses of CoronaVac, the vaccine developed by Chinese company Sinovac, were received by the Department of National Defence (DND).

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) last week said it was requiring everyone on its payroll to get vaccinated.

The AFP said if there were personnel who preferred other vaccines, they could get them but they had to pay for them themselves.

“If they don’t want the ones that are free, they can pay for others later on.

“But everybody should get vaccinated.”

The Food and Drug Administration said in December that getting inoculated against the disease was not compulsory.

The DND and AFP started vaccinating some of their personnel, who are on the frontlines, on Monday at Veterans Memorial and V. Luna Medical Centres.

Lorenzana said he would have volunteered to get inoculated with CoronaVac first to boost confidence among DND personnel, but age restrictions for the vaccine did not allow him to do so.

He is 72.

CI don’t understand our detractors.

“When vaccines have not arrived yet, they keep criticising us. When they arrive, they still criticise because Sinovac is no good.

“But 13 countries are already using Sinovac and have no complaints.”