The World Health Organization warned the Philippines it would lose 44 million doses of donated vaccines for the coronavirus if mayors and government officials continue jumping the line ahead of health frontliners and other persons on the priority list, the Palace said.
In a televised address on Wednesday night, President Rodrigo Duterte said he had been warned by the WHO that the country might lose vaccine donations from the COVAX facility if the priority list was not followed.
“If you do not follow the list of priority you might lose the assistance of the WHO. It is quite clear to us,” Duterte said.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque repeated the call on Thursday, which the Department of Health and the National Task Force Against COVID-19 underscored with a joint statement Thursday, reiterating that the vaccine prioritization framework must be followed.
“We once again emphasize that due to the limited number of vaccines, we should reserve these doses for our healthcare workers on whom we rely on to maintain our most critical health services,” said Health Secretary Francisco Duque III.
He said reports of officials skipping the vaccine queue have been referred to the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) for investigation.
National Task Force chief implementer and vaccine czar Carlito Galvez, Jr. said letting health workers get the COVID-19 jabs first was a “moral obligation.”
“We call on the public to follow our prioritization… because it is our moral obligation to allow our frontliners to be the first to receive the protection they need and deserve, especially amid this surge,” Galvez said.
Duque vowed that more COVID-19 vaccines will arrive, and that everyone will have their turn to be inoculated.
Duterte identified nine mayors who were found to have skipped the vaccine line:
· Alfred Romualdez – Tacloban City, Leyte
· Dibu Tuan – T’boli, South Cotabato
· Sulpicio Villalobos – Sto Niño, South Cotabato
· Noel Rosal – Legazpi City, Albay
· Abraham Ibba – Bataraza, Palawan
· Elanito Peña – Minglanilla, Cebu
· Victoriano Torres III – Alicia, Bohol
· Virgilio Mendez – San Miguel, Bohol
· Arturo Piollo II – Lila, Bohol
Duterte has already ordered the DOH to investigate the cases and bring them to the Office of the Ombudsman.
“We said before that mayors moved up the priority list to A4; they’re now part of the economic frontliners, soldiers. But for now, only those in A1 are being vaccinated and so do not jump the line,” Roque said Thursday.
Meanwhile, an official at the DILG fumed over the vaccination of actor Mark Anthony Fernandez, 42, who received his jab in Parañaque City.
In a radio interview, DILG Undersecretary Epimaco Densing III said the actor was strong and clearly did not belong in the priority list from A1 to A5, yet he was able to jump ahead of health care workers and senior citizens.
Parañaque City Mayor Edwin Olivarez defended the decision to inoculate Fernandez, saying the actor has comorbidities such as depression and hypertension that made him eligible to be prioritized for COVID-19 vaccination.
He said Fernandez’s depression was public knowledge and the medical team that inoculated him said he had hypertension.
“Depression is a comorbidity,” he said.
But Densing dismissed this explanation as an excuse for the city not following the government’s vaccination plan to inoculate health workers first, ahead of everybody else.
Based on the country’s vaccination priority groups, frontline healthcare workers (A1) are the first to be immunized against COVID-19, followed by senior citizens (A2) and people with comorbidities (A3).
The World Health Organization has set this priority ranking as a requirement for vaccine donations from the global vaccine-sharing scheme COVAX facility.
Roque said breaching the requirement could jeopardize countries’ requests for vaccine donations.
Interior Undersecretary and officer-in-charge Bernardo Florece Jr. said the Department of the Interior and Local Governments is awaiting the response of local chief executives who were asked to explain their inoculation ahead of front-liners.
“In the meantime, we hereby advise all governors, mayors, and other local government officials to refrain from getting inoculated ahead of the medical front-liners and strictly follow the prioritization list approved by the DOH. The intent of the national government is that all our medical front-liners must be vaccinated first because we need to protect our health care system first and foremost,” he said.
Some of the mayors took to media interviews to defend themselves.
Tacloban City’s Romualdez, Legazpi City’s Rosal, Bataraza’s Iba all said they took the jabs to convince reluctant front-liners that the vaccines were safe.
“If I did it, it was for the people in our city,” Rosal said.
Iba said he considered himself a frontliner.
Meanwhile, Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Gen. Debold Sinas said aside from their medical personnel, he wanted police who were members of the Joint Task Force Covid Shield to be vaccinated as well.
“We are recommending that the inclusion of the deployed JTF personnel in the priority of the vaccination program if possible,” Sinas said.
Sinas, who earlier contracted Covid-19, said this is to help protect the task force’s personnel who are now manning the checkpoints to enforce movement restrictions in the National Capital Region and the nearby provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Rizal known as ‘NCR Plus’ from March 22 to April 4.
He added that the PNP has established 52 quarantine control points (QCPs) to restrict the movement of unauthorized persons going in and out of the NCR. With PNA