Hesitancy of Filipinos in getting vaccinated against COVID-19 has gone down to 10 percent, Health Undersecretary and treatment czar Leopoldo Vega said Sunday.
“At the start, since last year, vaccine hesitancy was at about 30 percent, but it has gone down to 10 percent,” Vega said in a Super Radyo dzBB interview.
The government is looking for ways to encourage this 10 percent vaccine-hesitant population to get the COVID-19 jabs, through house-to-house efforts and continuous vaccination drives, Vega said.
On Saturday, the Department of Health said the government fell short of the five-million vaccination target of the third wave of the “Bayanihan, Bakunahan” national vaccination drive from February 10 to 18.
Only 3.5 million individuals were inoculated against COVID-19 at the conclusion of the drive, the DOH said.
Vega said one of the reasons why the government did not reach its five million quota was that inoculation was still slow particularly in certain areas in the Mindanao region affected by Typhoon Odette.
However, he assured the public that despite the Bayanihan, Bakunahan III’s shortfall, the vaccination drive in the country would still continue to get at least 77 million Filipinos vaccinated by the end of March.
He also called on senior citizens or those in the A2 category to get the jab as only 65 percent of them are vaccinated.
“We need to increase the efforts to look for the senior citizens because they are very vulnerable and they are primarily at risk for COVID-19,” he said.
Vega said there were AstraZeneca doses that would expire by the end of February and early March, thus the government was aiming to administer them particularly in areas with low vaccination rates.
The government is eyeing to fully vaccinate 90 million Filipinos by the time President Rodrigo Duterte steps down from office on June 30.