The willingness of Filipinos to receive Covid-19 vaccine has increased from 65 percent in January to 75 percent in March, the Department of Health (DOH) bared on Friday.
Responding to the question of the BusinessMirror in an online media forum, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire, however, clarified that the improved vaccine confidence among Filipinos has nothing to do with the arrival of Pfizer vaccines.
Vergeire said that the DOH conducted a survey from March 19 to March 30 and the question was: If Covid-19 vaccine is available, are you willing to have yourself vaccinated?
“And 75 percent answered yes,” Vergeire said but she did not mention the number of respondents.
Meanwhile, 85.8 percent responded favorably to the second question: If you know that the Covid-19 vaccine is safe and efficacious are you willing to be vaccinated?
“Even without the Pfizer vaccine during this time, the confidence in Covid vaccines of our countrymen is already high,” Vergeire said.
She added that other factors contributing to the increased confidence are the orderly rollout of the vaccines and the number of people communities who have received their Covid-19 jabs.
Cases
On Friday, the DOH logged 6,784 additional Covid-19 cases, bringing the total number of infections in the country to 1,131,467.
There were also 2,972 recoveries and 137 deaths.
Of the total number of cases, 5.2 percent (58,986) are active cases, 93.1 percent (1,053,523) have recovered, and 1.68 percent (18,958) has died.
Moreover, 71 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.
All laboratories were operational on May 12, 2021, while five labs were not able to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System.