By Eunice Samonte
Senators expressed concern about the increasing number of “jumpers” or people who are not in the priority list but have been inoculated due to connections.
Senate Minority leader Franklin Drilon said the government must ramp up vaccine supply, giving emphasis to the herd immunity that the government must work on.
“To achieve herd immunity, about 70 million Filipinos must be inoculated. Yet only less than a million or so doses are being administered today,” he observed.
In line with this, the Senator noted that government officials should be the first ones to follow the protocols and be held liable if the COVID-19 Vaccination Program Act is not followed.
“Further, the credibility of the government to make the Filipinos follow the rules is negatively affected by past incidents, including the reported illegal and unauthorized vaccination of government officials. I leave it to the Department of Justice to determine possible violations when the prioritization provided for in COVID-19 Vaccination Program Act is not followed,” he added.
On the other hand, Senator Koko Pimentel, the Department of Health (DOH), Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID), National Immunization Technical Group Advisory Group (NITAG), and others involved in the prioritization of vaccine recipients must review their prioritization list and consider the Governor, Mayor, and Barangay Chairman as “multi-dimensional frontliners” because they are really the “face of government” in everyday life.
“Since the focus of the entire government is this medical crisis, then these local chief executives are actually “health frontliners”, too. They are helping fight this health crisis. We should give them some importance, prioritization, and some elbow room to use their imagination in this fight against the pandemic,” he pointed out in a statement.
Meanwhile, Senate Health Committee Chairperson Senator Christopher “Bong” Go reminded local chief executives to strictly adhere to the government’s vaccine priority list of groups and sectors who should receive the shots first against COVID-19.
“Hindi po katanggap-tanggap na may makikita tayo nagpo-post pa po sa Facebook na nakikita na tapos na po silang nabakunahan (It is not acceptable to see them posting on Facebook showing they got inoculated,” he raised.
“Insulto po ‘yon sa ating health workers na hindi pa po nababakunahan na gusto pong magpabakuna. Nakikita nila na may nagpapaka-VIP (It’s an insult to our health workers who have not been vaccinated but want to. They see that there are those who pose as VIPs),” he added.
Go stressed that the general public must understand that medical frontliners should be the first to get the vaccines as they are at the forefront in the country’s fight against the dreaded COVID-19 disease.
The Senator shared that President Rodrigo Duterte was appalled by the actions of so-called “jumpers” or those individuals who cut the line in the vaccination program ahead of medical frontliners, prompting him to ask the Department of the Interior and Local Government and the Department of Health to investigate the incidents.
Meanwhile, Go mentioned that once the 1.7 million medical frontliners in the country would be inoculated, senior citizens and poor and indigent Filipinos who need to leave their houses for work will be vaccinated next.