“The effort is just not enough.”
Last Monday, the country recorded its highest daily infection of 22,366. Infections are spiking everywhere that it is becoming frightening. It is, therefore, safe to say that we are entering a critical phase of the pandemic. Either we will be able to take hold of the virus and start lowering the rate of infection soon or it will overwhelm us and kill many more Filipinos in the process.
We have now passed more than 2 million COVID cases and 33,500 COVID-19 deaths. In the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, we lost about 90,000 Filipinos out of a population of less than 11 million people. Will we ever get to that number or even surpass it? Hopefully not. It is still a long way to that number but with the Delta variant being 60 per cent more transmissible and only beginning to show its fury, we can never tell.
I do not think any of us ever expected the pandemic to be still around after 19 months. Yet, here we are still counting the daily deaths and infections which are increasing by leaps and bounds. We have not seen a daily death toll of less than 100 for some time. We are, however, not the only country in this predicament. Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are now battling the surge of the Delta variant. On a per-capita basis, Malaysia is worse as far as infections are concerned.
For us, figures coming from the Department of Health points to a grim future—at least in the short term. We have an embattled Health Secretary who is being pressured to resign. Health care workers are threatening to resign or stage a mass walkout because financial benefits have not been delivered after all this time and prices of food continue to rise.
All these are only adding to the misery brought about by the pandemic. As many medical experts have been pointing out, only through mass vaccination will we be able to vanquish the virus. Unfortunately for us, we do not have any control of when the vaccines will arrive. While rich countries are wallowing in vaccines, we are relying mostly on donated vaccines. The vaccines that we ordered are arriving in trickles ensuring that we in all probability will not achieve herd immunity by the end of the year. Not that the government is not trying its best because it is.
The effort is not just enough. As of 25 August, 48,885,590 vaccines of various brands have been delivered to the country with Sinovac constituting more than half of the vaccines. Also as of August 25, 31,433,450 have been administered which is divided into the following; 18,061,716 or 16.39 percent as first dose while 13,371,734 or 12.15 per cent as second dose. As can be seen by these figures, there is a need to double our efforts to get more vaccines into the country.
As a country, we are seventh in the ASEAN region when it comes to vaccine accomplishment thus far. We have to find a way to bring other vaccine brands into the country other than Sinovac and Sinopharm whose efficacy rates are low. There has to be other ways of keeping infections low other than lockdowns because this is taking their toll on all of us.
There are now fewer people following mandatory health protocols. Perhaps it is coming to the point where people are more willing to take their chances on the virus rather than avoiding the infection. As we are beginning to see, many simply want to get on with their lives because whatever they do, COVID-19 will not disappear and will always be with us like the seasonal flu. Maybe we are witnessing the new normal being played out.
Even the government both local and national are experiencing some kind of pandemic fatigue and weariness in their decision-making process. Sometimes, the government is in a quandary whether to tighten or loosen up. We always end up going for the middle ground whose outcome does not always come out the way we want. Our recent ECQ and MECQ actually allowed a lot of people out, defeating the very purpose of keeping people in their residences to prevent the spread of the virus. Many still do not realize that we are not yet out of the woods but people continue to take unnecessary chances amidst another wave worse than what we saw last April.
There’s still a long way to go and many people will still die of the virus. If only all of us will practice proven health protocols, chances are, we will survive the pandemic and get to spend Christmas this year with our families. Stay safe.