Manila urged to address vaccine related problem

MANILA: An administration lawmaker urged the government to address the problem of vaccine hesitancy, especially among senior Filipino citizens, amid the launching in late November of its expanded nationwide programme to encourage more Filipinos to get their coronavirus (COVID-19) jabs.

“Our problem at the moment is vaccine hesitancy. We have a long way to go and based on our experience in the past months that we were in a pandemic, the road toward the finish line is not a sprint along a straight path but a marathon on a twisty road,” Angara, the chairman of the Senate Commitee on Finance, pointed out.

Angara was reacting to concerns raised by several lawmakers regarding the appropriation of more funds for the purchase of vaccines in the country’s proposed national budget for 2022.

In their deliberations on the proposed budget, Angara cited concerns of his colleagues that the purchase of more vaccines through increased funding of more than $1 billion would lead to an oversupply.

But he said: “It would be beter to have excess funding rather than shortage.”

He also said that the country’s economic team had allocated more funds for the purchase of vaccines based on projections without considering the adverse impact of the virulent and deadly Delta variant of COVID-19 which was first detected in India.

Since then, the World Health organisation (WHO) has confirmed that the Delta variant has emerged as the dominant strain in the Philippines that resulted in the spike of COVID-19 infections not only in Metro Manila but also in other parts of the country.

In particular, Angara cited the case of many senior Filipino citizens, aged 60 and over, and estimated at over 10 million who have yet to get to receive their COVID-19 jabs.

He noted that even WHO had urged to government to help overcome the problem of vaccine hesitancy among the elderly Filipinos who are in the priority list of vaccines along with medical frontliners.