Vaccine hoppers told: Others not getting their jabs due to your ‘greed’

Health officials in a press briefing on Friday did not mince words in cautioning the public against resorting to vaccine hopping—or getting a different brand of COVID-19 vaccine after being fully inoculated.

Reacting to reports that some vaccinees have gone to great lengths to be inoculated anew with their preferred vaccine brand, Eric Domingo, director general of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said: “It (vaccine hopping) is less of a legal issue but more of a moral and ethical [question], since there were others deprived of the vaccines due to your greed.”

In the same online briefing, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire echoed Domingo, saying there will be no legal sanctions.

“Please know that there are others who are not getting their vaccines because of you,” she said.

Vergeire also advised vaccinees who have been inoculated again to report any side effects they may experience, as these still need to be studied and recorded.

She said there was still no approval for booster shots in the country, despite the US FDA’s approval of a third vaccine shot for certain immunocompromised individuals.

In an earlier briefing, Vergeire said “safety and equity” issues prevent the Department of Health from recommending booster shots, despite early studies attesting to their effectiveness and, in the case of some vaccine brands, their necessity.

Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said on Friday that the government was close to achieving its goal of 250,000 daily inoculations, as the National Capital Region (NCR) marked its first week on a new lockdown.

“We are close to achieving our target for NCR of 250,000 jabs in a single day. We are confident that we will breach that figure very soon and sustain that momentum in the succeeding weeks, despite the [many] tasks our mayors are performing simultaneously,” said Galvez, chief implementer of the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19, in a statement.

According to the NTF, the country was able to administer a total of 3,478,082 vaccine doses from Aug. 6 to Aug. 12—or a daily average jab rate of 496,869.The country recorded its highest number of administered jabs in one day on Aug. 5, the eve of the lockdown in Metro Manila, with 710,482 inoculations.

The NTF said that as of Thursday, 12,182,006 or 17.19 percent of the country’s eligible target population had been fully vaccinated, and more than 14 million have received their first shot. —WITH A REPORT FROM DEXTER CABALZA