OVP's camp to Palace blaming Robredo for vaccine hesitancy: Who's politicking now?

The Duterte administration's attempt to blame Vice President Leni Robredo for the public's low confidence in the Chinese COVID-19 Sinovac vaccine shows it wasn't the latter who is playing politics, her spokesperson Barry Gutierrez said Tuesday.

Gutierrez was responding to comments made by President Rodrigo Duterte and his spokesperson, Harry Roque, blaming Robredo for the public's low confidence in Chinese COVID-19 vaccine Sinovac. They said Robredo insisted that Sinovac—like COVID-19 vaccine brands Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca—should have secured positive recommendation from the Health Technology Assessment Council (HTAC) before being used on health workers.

This was contrary to the Palace’s position that HTAC is a  recommendatory panel.

“This administration spends more time attacking Leni Robredo than responding to the real, urgent problems of our people and nation. Kulelat tayo sa pagkuha ng bakuna? Awayin si Leni Robredo. Mabagal ang pagtugon sa bagyo at baha? Siraan si Leni Robredo,” Gutierrez said in a statement.

“Milyon milyon ang nawalan ng trabaho? Insultuhin si Leni Robredo. Tapos sila daw ang 'hindi namumulitika?'” Gutierrez added.

Gutierrez, however, assured the public that Robredo remains unfazed by such attacks.

“Sa kanila na ‘yang puro paninisi, itutuloy na lang namin ang trabaho,” he added.

The Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended Sinovac for clinically healthy individuals aged 18 to 50 years old. However, it did not recommend Sinovac on health care workers since its efficacy rate for such group only reached 50.4%. 

The Health department ultimately endorsed Sinovac for health workers' use, saying it will be beneficial to them since Sinovac is 78% effective against moderate COVID-19 symptoms and 100% effective against severe symptoms.

The Philippines started its COVID-19 vaccination program last March 1, the last to do so in Southeast Asia. 

The country has a COVID-19 vaccine supply of 1.12 million donated doses of Sinovac and AstraZeneca so far, and both are administered in two doses. 

This means that this supply is only good for less than half of the country’s 1.7 million health workers. —KG, GMA News