An official of the Episcopal Commission on Health Care of the Philippine Catholic bishops’ conference urged Filipinos not to hesitate to have themselves inoculated with the COVID-19 vaccine.
“If the slot is already ours, then we should take it,” said Bishop Oscar Florencio, vice chairman of the commission. “As the experts say, the best vaccine is what you have now,” he added.
The prelate said the vaccine is already available in the country, but “it might not be enough.” Still he said it might already be God’s answer to the prayer of the Filipino people.
“For us Catholics, this may be the answer to our Oratio Imperata (mandatory prayer),” he said.
“Why not avail for those who are given the slots? Otherwise, the ‘oratio’ will just be a waste,” added the bishop.
“We know that this COVID will stay even without vaccine or with vaccine. They will stay with us for a while,” he said.
“We need to be inoculated so that we can alleviate the loss of dear lives.”
The Philippines has started its immunization program last week among frontline workers, but officials have acknowledged that they have an uphill struggle to persuade many people to take the vaccine.
Earlier, concerns have been raised over the specific vaccines that the Philippines plans to use, particularly over Chinese company Sinovac Biotech’s vaccine, for which one study showed effectiveness of little over 50 percent, although another gave it over 91 percent.
The government announced on March 8 that over 44,000 vaccine doses against COVID-19 have so far been administered in the country since it started its immunization program last week.
The Philippines kicked off its COVID-19 vaccination program on March 1 after the arrival of 600,000 doses of CoronaVac, the vaccine produced by China’s Sinovac BioTech.
Also last week, over 400,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine were delivered.
The national government continued to claim a successful response to the coronavirus pandemic despite statistics that tell otherwise.
On Monday, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque maintained that the Philippines is “excellent” in containing the virus that contains COVID-19 as compared to the United States.
The Department of Health has reported more than 3,300 new confirmed cases on Monday, bringing the total cases to 597,763.
It was the fourth straight day with more than 3,000 new infections in the country. There are a total of 545,912 and death toll stands at 12,521.
In comparison to neighboring countries, the World Health Organization-Western Pacific region reported that the Philippines still has the highest new cases in the last 72 hours, followed by Malaysia with 5,517, and Japan with 3,264.
