A year after the implementation of community quarantine against pandemic began, many criticized that the situation in the country did not seem to have changed because local government units (LGUs) returned to the previous curfew and other restrictions.
But the Palace and other pandemic officials denied the allegation.
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said that compared to last year, the country’s facilities for treating the sick are better.
“We are not back to square one kasi po we have better facilities, we have more clinical bed capacity, we have more ward bed capacities, we have prepared the health care capacity para nga po gamutin iyong mas maraming mga magkakasakit,” Roque said.
What is important is that the vaccination that is seen as the key to returning to normalcy in the Philippines has already started.
According to vaccine czar Carlito Galvez, it is expected that before the end of March, the second volume of vaccine donations from China of 400,000 doses of Sinovac vaccine CoronaVac will arrive.
This is in addition to the government’s purchase of 1 million doses from Sinovac which will arrive after March.
This will be followed by 900,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the COVAX facility.
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It is said to be enough to vaccinate the country’s medical frontliners.
As of Tuesday morning, as many as 216,000 medical frontliners were receiving the vaccine nationwide.
The government is targeting to start vaccinating senior citizens in the second week of April, followed by the general population before the end of the month.
This is when the start of the arrival of the bulk of ordered vaccines from various countries is expected.
This includes 30 million doses of the Novavax vaccine after the government signed a supply agreement with the Serum Institute of India.
About 50 to 70 million Filipinos are expected to be vaccinated by 2021.
If this is fulfilled, it is possible that the country will end the COVID-19 pandemic by 2022.