Faster Vaccination Rollout: Critical to Economic Recovery

June 20, 2021

In a senate hearing conducted last June 15, Finance Secretary Sonny Dominguez bared the government’s P88.6 billion budget allocation for its COVID-19 vaccine procurement. According him, that would be enough to purchase 148 million doses in order to fully inoculate 70 million Filipinos or 100 percent of the country’s adult population, the fourth quarter target set by the government.

Despite these laudable efforts and targets, we have to check if these translate to actual people that have already been inoculated. Latest data shows that so far, only 7.08 million doses have been administered, just a little over 3 percent of the country’s population. At this rate, government will fail to hit its Q2 target of at least 16 million vaccinated individuals and its target of 70 million by the end of the year.

If budget is not the issue, then procurement and implementation surely is. Currently, alarming spikes in COVID-19 cases have been reported and observed in areas like in the Bicol Region, Western Visayas, Dumaguete, and other areas in Mindanao.

We have to recognize the critical role immunization plays in solving not just the health crisis but the looming economic one as well.

CitizenWatch Philippines calls for the faster administration of these vaccines. We encourage the government to reach out to the private sector so that they may work together to address any logistical constraints, be it manpower or storage.

It is no secret that economic growth is heavily dependent on and directly proportional to a healthy populace. The more people are vaccinated, the more people avoid severe illness, hospitalization, and death. The more people are healthy, the more people can go to work and start providing for their families.

The pandemic has bombarded us on all sides. The health sector has taken a massive hit. National debt and inflation are rising. Clearly, we must rely on our greatest weapon in combating and winning against all these threats: the rapid success of our immunization programs.