President Rodrigo Duterte. (File photo by KING RODRIGUEZ / Presidential Photographers Division)
MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte said on Monday said that he would want to shoot dead the Omicron COVID-19 variant.
Dutete said that in jest during a taped televised meeting he convened with medical experts and members of the National National Task Force Against COVID-19.
“Me, I want to kill that. It’s just that I don’t know where [it is]. I want to shoot that crazy thing,” he said in Filipino.
Then focusing on people who refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19, the president said he would inject them in the head rather than in the arm.
“In some countries, this is already mandatory,” he said. “Here, the human rights advocates are making noise. So, our first target, we will go their office… I will bring along a doctor. The needle would be injected in your head — not your arm. Really, I’m not joking.”
This is not the first time that Duterte made such a remark during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In one briefing, he joked that people who refuse to get vaccinated should be injected while sleeping.
In another briefing, he also gave a controversial bit of advice to use gasoline as a disinfectant to prevent contracting the virus.
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