Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 7) — A member of the government’s vaccine expert panel believes the initial target of vaccinating around 70% of the population by year-end is unreachable given current progress.
Dr. Rontgene Solante on Thursday said that at this point, reaching 40% would be a good scenario.
“Hindi natin makuha ‘yung target natin ngayon dahil unang-una, medyo malayo pa tayo,” he told CNN Philippines’ Newsroom Ngayon. “Kasi overall, sa buong bansa…hindi pa tayo nakaabot ng 30%.”
[Translation: We won’t be able to hit our target because first of all, we’re still quite far from it. Overall, we haven’t even covered at least 30% of our population.]
To reach herd immunity, the government initially set the vaccination goal at 70%, but experts later raised this to “up to 90%” in light of new variants which have lowered the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.
Based on latest government data, 22.4 million Filipinos have been fully vaccinated, while around 2.9 million are awaiting their second shot.
This means only around 23% of the population have received at least one vaccine dose.
Official figures also show the country is administering an average of 435,500 shots per day.
