The near riot caused by people flooding vaccination centers a day before Metro Manila and Calabarzon went into a lockdown may very well be considered a reflection of the mounting fear and exasperation Filipinos feel about the inability of the government to contain a pandemic that has sapped them physically, emotionally and financially.
Palace spokesman Harry Roque furiously blamed the melee to “fake news” that circulated on social media, which claimed that the government would not extend financial aid to unvaccinated individuals. He threatened to criminally charge those spreading “such fake information,” glossing over President Duterte’s own intimidation against those who refuse to get inoculated. During his regular televised address, Duterte said that unvaccinated people should be barred from leaving their homes and should be put in prison.
There’s the rub. How can the government achieve its zealous vaccination target amid a vaccine shortage? Many Filipinos want to take the jab, but where’s the vaccine?
With about 1.62 million Covid-19 cases and as many as 28,000 deaths, the Philippines has the second-worst coronavirus outbreak in Southeast Asia after Indonesia. Only 10.3 million people, or 9.3 percent of the country’s 110-million population, have taken the two-dose jab. This is way below than the 70-million vaccination target needed to induce herd immunity. A slow vaccination rate worries global health experts because it heightens the risk of more people getting infected by the Delta variant.
The Delta variant is now wreaking havoc among unvaccinated people around the world and has pushed pharmaceutical companies into overdrive to find an immediate antidote. While recent data suggest that all three vaccines allowed for emergency use by the US Food and Drug Administration provide sound protection against severe disease and death from the Delta variant, they appear to offer meager protection against minor to moderate infections. This means that vaccinated people could still catch the virus and spread it to those who have refused to, or are unable, to take the jab.
“Vaccinated people are transmitting it, and the extent is unclear, but there’s no doubt they’re transmitting it… People who are vaccinated, even when they’re asymptomatic, can transmit the virus,” says Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, in a recent White House Covid-19 task force briefing.
In the same briefing, Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky labelled the Delta variant as a unique virus compared with other coronavirus variants and that “it is showing every day its willingness to outsmart us and to be an opportunist in areas where we have not shown a fortified response against it.”
The speed with which it has spread worldwide has brought anxiety among scientists about what the virus is up to next. This year’s variant battles are shaping up to be a much longer war, one whose end is not in the immediate horizon. Also known as B.1.617.2, the variant has mutations on the spike protein that makes human infection easier. Based on current trends and barring the entry of a new and more competitive variant, Delta will be the globally dominant strain over the coming months. It is now the dominant strain in the US and has been identified in many other countries, causing a frightening global surge in Covid cases and wreaking havoc in already overwhelmed health systems.
It took only a couple of weeks for Delta to alter the estimate for what it will take to end the pandemic. Epidemiologists had earlier placed it at 70 percent or 80 percent of the population vaccinated. With the help of immunity from natural infections, the forecast was that the virus could be under control at that range. Since the emergence of more contagious variants, they surmise that the target could now be in the range of 90 percent.
“To see Delta just running laps around these other strains is very concerning,” Benjamin Neuman, a virologist with Texas A&M University, told the Washington Post. “It’s like ‘Jurassic Park’, the moment you realize the dinosaurs have all got loose again.”
For the Duterte administration, there is no other time than now to show its resolve in combatting the pandemic. For one, 9 out of 10 Filipinos believe that the government response to the pandemic has been deficient. This is according to a June 2021 poll by Pulse Asia Research, which found that Filipinos bewailed the lack of financial aid, slow and inefficient vaccine rollout and failure to enforce health protocols. Add to this the fact that joblessness rose to 3.76 million in June from 3.73 million a month earlier, according to the Philippine Statistics Agency which placed underemployment to 6.409 million Filipinos. The National Economic and Development Authority also predicted that the strict lockdown in Metro Manila from Aug. 6 to 20 would increase the number of poor people by 177,000, and that about 444,000 Filipinos could become jobless.
Dennis C. Coronacion, head of the University of Santo Tomas Political Science Department, said that Duterte may have risked his political capital after failing to chart in his last State of the Nation address his administration’s tack against the pandemic. “Since President Duterte has failed to do this,” Conception noted, “I expect most of the presidential aspirants to fill the gap and craft their own economic recovery programs.”
Political pundits also believe that recovery from the pandemic would be a crucial issue in the campaign for the 2022 elections, with the opposition having a chance of winning, if it could present a viable pandemic recovery plan. Of course, it is not farfetched to think that the opposition would try to win votes by highlighting this administration’s failure to contain the pandemic, and solve problems of poverty, rising commodity prices, unemployment, among other key issues.
The government’s pandemic response—among the other deciding factors in the 2022 polls—could either be an endorsement or a condemnation of this administration’s performance. Has Duterte done enough?
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