Recently the Philippine News Agency (PNA) reported that the number of people in the country counted as fully vaccinated for COVID-19 was approaching the 70,000,000 mark. What is disturbing, however, is that the number of people who received their booster shots (note: the 3rd shot after two doses of most COVID-19 vaccine brands) is still low at less than 13,000,000 counted.
The anti-vaccine crazies out there can discourage people all they want but nothing changes the fact that booster shots are essential for the Philippines in order to truly emerge from the COVID-19 crisis and progress.
To put things in perspective, posted below is the excerpt from the PNA report. Some parts in boldface…
The Philippines has administered 144,781,087 doses of coronavirus vaccines, with 66,979,873 Filipinos already with the full primary series.
Of the total, only 12,687,684 have booster shots as of Tuesday.
The latest data of the National Task Force (NTF) Against Covid-19 also showed that 72,010,262 individuals, or 80.01 percent of the country’s target for population protection, have received at least one dose.
During President Rodrigo Duterte’s prerecorded “Talk to the People” aired late Monday night, NTF chief Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. acknowledged the country is still lagging in the administration of booster shots or third doses.
Among the pediatric age groups, 9,918,970 first doses have been given to the 12 to 17 bracket and 2,694,251 for 5 to 11.
“Maganda po ang coverage natin from 18 to 59 years old. Ito po ‘yung adult population at mayroon po tayong (We have a good vaccination coverage from 18 to 59 years old. This is the adult population and we have) more or less 94.28 percent (of the target), with 52 million already with the first dose,” Galvez said.
For the 60 years old above, Galvez said the country has already vaccinated 6,907,715 with at least one dose.
If you do the math, 12,687,684 patients with booster shots out of the 66,979,873 fully vaccinated people is equivalent to 18.94%. In terms of simple numbers, there are more than 54 million fully vaccinated patients who have yet to get boosted. Still a long way to go before many others get boosted.
Let me end this piece by asking you readers: What do you think about this new development? If you have been fully vaccinated already, how long has it been since that happened? If you have not received your booster shot yet, have you tried contacting the local vaccination team? Do you think that it is time for the local governments to start announcing incentives to convince fully vaccinated patients to get boosted at last?
You may answer in the comments below. If you prefer to answer privately, you may do so by sending me a direct message online.
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Author Carlo Carrasco 
I’m not anti-vaccine, but me and many of my friends don’t see the need for booster shots. Hospitals are about empty of covid cases. And we were told that getting vaccinated with 1 J&J or 2 doses of the other brands would get us out of the pandemic. And we needed 70% of the population vaccinated to do that. Then the government kept changing the goalposts. It became a higher population. Then teenagers. Then 5-11 year olds.
Later on we find out that the vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission of covid, so there’s no way they will stop covid. It’s all futile and a health risk to get covid vaccinated at this point.
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