Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 11) — Health Secretary Francisco Duque III on Thursday said 76% of the 1.125 million vaccine doses received by the Philippines have been deployed.
During a briefing after the ceremonial vaccination at the De Los Santos Medical Center, Duque also said up to 84,000 individuals have been vaccinated in 361 implementing sites across the country. Around 11,000 healthcare workers are being vaccinated per day, he added.
There was also less than 1% who experienced minor side effects. Two people experienced allergic reaction after receiving Sinovac but are now in a better condition.
The government targets to purchase 3.4 million anti-coronavirus shots to immunize the country’s 1.7 million healthcare workers first.
Despite this, Duque emphasized that the journey towards achieving herd immunity is still long.
“The journey towards herd immunity is going to be long especially because the supply shortage has been a perennial problem for the low to middle income countries like the Philippines,” he explained.
He also said the public should not rely on vaccines alone to address the increasing number of COVID-19 cases since the most effective way to do so is by following health protocols.
For the past weeks, the Philippines has been reporting 2,000 to 3,000 new infections. The OCTA group even projected that the country could see as many as 6,000 new cases a day by the end of March.
It also said the spike in cases, specifically in Metro Manila, may be due to the detection of new variants that are considered to be more contagious.
However, Duque said this cannot be directly attributed to the new variants since they only account for a small percentage of the sample sequence. This was rather caused by citizens who do not strictly follow minimum health standards, he added, while also reiterating the need to follow these protocols to address the increase in cases.
The Philippines recorded 3,749 new infections on Thursday, which raised the total case count to 607,048, with over 12,600 deaths and more than 546,000 recoveries.
