No deception in Philippine second-place ranking in ASEAN COVID-19 vaccinations –Palace

The Duterte administration denied it was deceiving the people when it touted that the Philippines ranked second in Southeast Asia in terms of COVID-19 vaccinations, with seven million doses administered, as this was the truth.

“This is not a mistake. It’s just two ways of looking at the numbers, one of them is absolute numbers and we remain second [in that]. Another is a percentage number which depends on your population. There is no deception,” presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said on Monday.

"This is just the truth,” Roque added.

When it comes to the percentage of the population vaccinated, the Philippines ranked eighth based on data collected by non-government entity Our World in Data with a little over 4% of the Philippine population getting vaccinated.

But Roque argued that it would be unfair to compare the country’s vaccination program progress with Singapore whose population was short of four million - way less than the Philippines’ 110 million.

“Natural, 50% [na] ang [nabakunahan sa] Singapore eh ilan lang naman ang [tao sa] Singapore, wala pa yata silang four million,” Roque said.

(It is only natural for Singapore to be able to vaccinate 50% of its population by now because they are so few.)

”We do not dispute the percentage and we never claimed that our percentage should be higher. Of course, population of each country varies and our percentage is low, But for the first three months, we were able to vaccinate around seven million. At current pace, we could vaccinate 21 million which could still go up given enough supply,” Roque added.

Roque then said that the government’s target of 58 million vaccinated individuals by the end of the year, or 70 percent of the population of areas where there was a high incidence of COVID-19, was within reach since a steady stream of vaccines was expected by July.

“If we go at the current pace, I think we will hit the target of population protection by December,” he added.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations includes the Philippines, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. — DVM, GMA News