The roll-out of the first batch of COVID-19 vaccines among medical frontliners appears to help improve vaccine confidence as hospitals report that more health workers are signing up to be vaccinated.
This was revealed by Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles, who in an interview said that “we’re seeing an uptick of Filipinos who are now confident enough to take the vaccines.”
The first batch of CoronaVax vaccines was administered to health workers in Metro Manila hospitals last week.
Nograles acknowledged that the government had received reports that there were health workers who initially had concerns about the first batch of vaccines that had arrived last week.
“So, ‘nung una siguro, in the start, we’re seeing some hesitancy. But now mataas na. Hospitals now are asking us for more doses already,” said the Palace official.
“So, we’re seeing a lot of our healthcare workers who are already more open to taking the vaccine.”
The first batch of CoronaVax vaccines was administered to health workers in Metro Manila hospitals last week. The Chinese government donated 600,000 doses of the Sinovac-produced vaccine, which were authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for use among health workers under the age of 60.
“So, ‘nung una siguro, in the start, we’re seeing some hesitancy. But now mataas na. Hospitals now are asking us for more doses already.”
According to Nograles, Co-Chair of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF), the government would take steps to ensure that health workers would be prioritized as the country receives additional doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
“Maliwanag naman po na ‘yung mga medical health frontliners po natin ‘yung bibigyan talaga ng ultimate priority natin. We have to show to the WHO (World Health Organization) Covax facility that we’re sticking to the priority list,” stressed Nograles.
The Cabinet official said that the government’s strict enforcement of its vaccine priority list would help ensure that the WHO would prioritize the Philippines in COVID-19 allocations.
Nograles said that currently there are 222,783 health workers in the government’s master list, and that this was being continually updated to include all of the country’s estimated 1.7 million health workers.