MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte apparently put his foot down on the inclusion of two of his top lieutenants in the fight against COVID-19 to be among the firsts to be administered with Sinovac vaccine during Monday’s rollout of the government’s vaccination program, amid the insistence of the government advisory council to reserve the first vaccine shots to health care workers.
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said that in order to restore public confidence in the vaccination, the President had directed vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. and testing czar Vince Dizon, chief implementer and deputy chief implementer of the National Task Force against COVID-19, respectively, to get vaccinated along with health care workers, which is a priority group for vaccination.
Roque claimed that the Interim National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NITAG) had earlier rejected a proposal of the Inter-Agency Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF), to reserve 50 vaccine doses for so-called influencers tapped to drum up vaccine confidence.
The NITAG, Roque claimed, insisted that health workers should be the first to get the CoronaVac, the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinovac Biotech.
“Sino po ang nabakunahan? Dalawa lang po, at ito po ay dahil sinabi talaga ni Presidente [na] bakunahan sila. Ito po si [National Task Force against Covid-19] chief implementer Carlito Galvez at si deputy chief implementer Vince Dizon,” he said during a Palace briefing.
(Who were vaccinated? There were only two of them, and they were vaccinated because the President said they should get the vaccines. They are NTF chief implementer Carlito Galvez and deputy chief implementer Vince Dizon.)
“Ayaw pa po sana pero—anyway I might as well say the truth—talagang si Presidente po ang nagsabi, at least itong dalawang ito kinakailangan mabakunahan, dahil of course we need to walk the talk,” he added.
(Galvez and Dizon have initially refused to get vaccinated first, but I might as well say the truth — it was the President who ordered that they should be inoculated first because, of course, we have to walk the talk)
Roque himself claimed that he requested to get vaccinated during the rollout at the Philippine General Hospital on Monday, but he was told that he was not among the priority as well. He was promised to be given a vaccine shot if there was a spare for the day, but he late failed to make the cut since there was no vaccine dose to spare.
The Philippines received on Sunday 600,000 doses of CoronaVac that were donated by the government of China.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III earlier said that a total of 756 individuals, mostly health workers, were inoculated during the kick-off of the country’s inoculation drive in several hospitals on Monday.
The first day of the simultaneous roll-out of the vaccines were held at the Philippine General Hospital, Lung Center of the Philippines, Dr. Jose N. Rodriguez Memorial Medical Center and Sanitarium (Tala), Veterans Memorial Medical Center, Philippine National Police General Hospital in Camp Crame, and Victoriano Luna Medical Center.