Philippine vaccination program mired by hesitancy, supply issues, says epidemiologist

Hesitancy is not the only reason why the Philippines' vaccination program is currently below target but this is also driven by the low supply of doses available, an epidemiologist explained Wednesday.

According to EpiMetrics Inc.'s Dr. John Wong, the Philippines is currently trailing below its target of vaccinating several priority sectors — A2 or the senior citizens, and A3 or persons with comorbidities.

The government targets to vaccinate 70% of the population by the end of the year to achieve herd immunity.

Based on the targets, the government should vaccinate around 7% every month and should have already reached 21% in the past three months since the program started on March 1.

Latest data show that for the A1 sector or frontline healthcare workers, some 91% have already been achieved.

For senior citizens, only 14% have been vaccinated while only 8% were of persons with comorbidities were inoculated.

"Before we say that this is due to vaccine hesitancy, we have to remember that vaccination confidence, which is the opposite of vaccine hesitancy, is at 32%," Wong said in a DOH roundtable discussion on Wednesday.

"At this level, we know that some of these people want the vaccine but cannot access it, so aside from the vaccine hesitancy issue, we also have to address access issues," he added.

The Philippines has received at least 8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines so far, including doses from Sinovac, AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Sputnik V.

As of May 25, 2021, some 1.29 million individuals received both doses of vaccines, equivalent to only nearly 1% of the Philippine population.

At the current rate, Wong said some 50% of the vaccinees are failing to come back to receive their second dose. — RSJ, GMA News