MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte lauded the country’s performance in vaccinating Filipinos on Monday, saying its “good record” showed how hard the government had worked to secure COVID-19 vaccines.
“Our record is good despite unfounded criticisms> I mean, we expect it. The Philippines was able to get the upper berth of the countries that are inoculated. That record is good, and to think people were almost in a quandary on where to get the next vaccination,” Duterte said, speaking partly in Filipino in a pre-recorded address.
Duterte was reacting to the remark of Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., the country’s vaccine manager, that the Philippines was third among Southeast Asian countries in terms of the number of people vaccinated at over 1.2 million individuals.
“I am happy that we have completed the vaccination of the members of the medical [sector] — those who are called frontliners,” Duterte said.
However, only 965,960 health workers have been vaccinated so far, according to Galvez’s presentation. The government’s target is to vaccinate 1.7 million health workers.
“So you can see that we’re not the weakest. Our performance is good. It goes to show that we are really working very hard, especially Secretary Galvez, to get the vaccines here in the Philippines on time — though it’s not as fast as people would like to expect,” Duterte said.