Robredo says COVID-19 vaccine rollout 'far off target' to reach herd immunity

Vice President Leni Robredo on Sunday was alarmed over the delays in vaccine rollout as the government is "far off" its target to achieve herd immunity.

In a Facebook post, Robredo called for improvement of vaccine rollout, citing that only 269,583 health workers were vaccinated against COVID-19, which means only 15,857 medical workers are being inoculated.

"Government target is we achieve herd immunity by the end of the year. Herd immunity is 70% of the population. 70% of 105M people is 73,500,000. If we have about 286 remaining days in 2021, we should inoculate 256,993 people per day. We are so far off the target at the rate we are going now," she pointed out.

Robredo also asked the government to determine the "bottlenecks" to fast-track the deployment of vaccines.

"1M palang supply natin, pero in 17 days hindi pa nga tayo naka 50% utilization, papaano na kung 70M na yung available?" she explained.

(We only have 1 million supply of vaccines, but in 17 days, we haven't had 50 percent utilization. What if we already have 70 million supply of vaccines?)

Train, identify vaccinators

Meanwhile, Robredo reiterated their call to identify and train more vaccinators and prepare more vaccination centers because of the slow vaccination process.

This after Health Chief Francisco Duque III cited that monitoring of side effects of those who got vaccinated accounted for the slow vaccinations.

"This is what we have been asking since last year - prepare the deployment plan, treat it as a logistics problem, identify and train vaccinators, prepare large vaccination centers that will make possible a more efficient rollout," said Robredo.

Robredo previously urged the government to speed up its vaccination process to reach herd immunity earlier than 2023 as the country suffered economic losses during the strict lockdown.

Data from the Food and Drug Administration said 240,297 individuals were inoculated from March 1 to March 17. A total of 7,331, including one fatality, experienced side effects from the vaccines. —Consuelo Marquez/KG, GMA News