MANILA, Philippines — Don’t insist on getting the US-made Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine as the other vaccines are just as good, President Rodrigo Duterte urged Filipinos in his taped briefing that aired Wednesday night.
“‘To those people who would like to demand Pfizer and nothing else, that cannot be done because not all the vaccines that arrived are from Pfizer,” he said in Filipino.
“I cannot administer exclusively Pfizer [to people] in one place to the exclusion of other Filipinos. That cannot be done. They have to be mixed, and people have to be blind to what is given to them,” he added. “It’s enough that there are vaccines. The best vaccine is the one available for you.”
He pointed out that the most numerous vaccines currently available were those that came from China — that is CoronaVac from Sinovac BioTech.
According to a recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey, 63% of Filipinos prefer COVID-19 vaccines made in the United States like those made by Pfizer and Moderna.