Senator Sherwin Gatchalian asked the government to start the COVID-19 vaccination of the general public or to “those who are willing” next month.
“We’re now in our third month of our vaccination program, and from my observation, it’s about time to move the general public up in the priority program as early as June,” Gatchalian said in an ANC interview.
“So meaning, allowing the general public, anyone who is willing to take their vaccine to be vaccinated as early as June,” he added.
Gatchalian cited a recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey, which showed only 32% of the Filipinos are willing to avail themselves of the vaccine.
He explained that the country expects to have 21 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine by June, and this would be enough for the 32% who wanted to be inoculated against the virus.
Gatchalian: Vaccinate general public by June
“If you do the simple math, in NCR Plus, there are about 26 million in population, and the clincher here is the recent SWS survey where it said that only 32% want to be vaccinated. The vaccine acceptance rate is only 32%. So if you multiply it to 25 million by 32%, you get about 8 million,” he said.
“Eight million is less than the 21 million inventory. So we have more than enough to vaccine the willing people who want to be vaccinated,” he further explained.
“If you do the simple math, in NCR Plus, there are about 26 million in population, and the clincher here is the recent SWS survey where it said that only 32% want to be vaccinated. The vaccine acceptance rate is only 32%. So if you multiply it to 25 million by 32%, you get about 8 million,” he said.
“Eight million is less than the 21 million inventory. So we have more than enough to vaccine the willing people who want to be vaccinated,” he further explained.
“To achieve herd immunity by the end of the year, we have to start with the willing because they’re raring to go,” he added.
The country has administered a total of 4,097,425 COVID-19 vaccine doses nationwide as of May 22.
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