Strategic recovery plan during COVID-19 toward herd immunity in the Philippines

Abstract

A recent correspondence by Gozum articulated that common good and public service are vital components for government o cials to promote COVID-19 vaccination. In another article, Dela Cruz et al. succinctly pointed out the need for transparency among government o cials to gain trust from Filipino citizens in promoting vaccination in the Philippines. These two articles posed valuable insights about government o cials’ important key attributes to address the need for e cient COVID-19 vaccination that could lead to boosting public confidence and lessen public vaccine hesitancy. In addition, a recent correspondence by Vergara emphasized that social trauma is a contributory factor to Filipinos’ vaccine hesitancy and rightfully indicated that ‘Filipinos remain suspicious over the alleged goodwill of the Chinese Government in providing assistance for the Philippine Government’s procurement of vaccines’. With this, the Filipinos’ mistrust to China contributes to vaccine hesitancy that could a ect herd immunity in the country. It could potentially add to backsliding of the government’s unclear recovery plan during COVID-19. This article posits that there is a dire need for the Philippine government to strengthen trust from its Filipino constituents by means of equitable access to Western-made vaccines. Thus, this article addresses two points. First, it scrutinizes the Philippine government o cials’ common good, public service and transparency due to the lack of long-term strategic recovery plan to achieve herd immunity in the Philippines. Second, it urges the Philippine government to leverage a long-termmultilateral strategic recovery approach inCOVID19 vaccination procurement and rollout in the Philippines. Notably, COVID-19 vaccination in the Philippines is literally proceeding too slowly due to the lack of government pandemic managers’ long-term strategic plan. The Philippine government has no clear and transparent approach toward equitable COVID-19 vaccine procurement process. The only obvious approach so far at the moment is Philippines’ diplomacy to China’s Sinovac-made ‘CoronaVac’ vaccine, which has recently started kick-o dated 1 March 2021. This is evident also when President Rodrigo Roa Duterte received first dose of Sinopharm’s COVID-19 vaccine which caught public criticisms. Although it was recently reported on 7 May 2021 that 1.5 million Sinovac’s CoronaVac arrived in the Philippines, the National Capital Region will be prioritized. The fact still remains that there is a little progress to equitable access on other Western-made vaccines throughout the country. This shows that there is still long way to achieve herd immunity considering the lack of multilateral strategic partnerships for COVID-19 vaccination scheme, particularly mobilizing cooperation with international and local non-governmental organizations, including but not limited to private companies, academe and other business stakeholders in the country. Moreover, the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases recently failed to act promptly in seeking Congress the urgency to pass indemnity law or to submit indemnity agreement to COVAX, which resulted to the delay of initial delivery of BioNTech ‘Pfizer’ vaccines from World Health Organization’s COVAX scheme. This is an evident mismanagement considering that COVID-19 is changing too rapidly and new variants are spreading too easily. Hence, to provide Filipinos equitable access to COVID-19 vaccination, this article urges the Philippine government pandemic managers, law makers and top diplomats to collaborate closely with the USA, UK and European Union to leverage strategic partnerships to give equitable access to Filipinos not only access to China-made ‘CoronaVac’, but also Western-made vaccines like AstraZeneca, BioNTech Pfizer , Moderna and Janssen.