Southeast Asian nations must be able to stand on their own in recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic even with help from external partners, President Duterte said on Tuesday.

As the World Health Organization warned this week, the COVID pandemic is far from over. While advanced economies with an abundance of vaccines are reopening their economies, with some even ditching mask mandates, developing countries including the Philippines continue to struggle with vaccine supplies.

When we needed an excuse for our slow vaccination rollout, we whined that the wealthy nations had been cornering the COVID-19 vaccine supply, depriving the less progressive countries, including the Philippines, of their equitable share of the serum.

The Quezon City government has reached its target of fully vaccinating 1.7 million residents and workers against COVID-19.

Cebu City is now classified as ”very low risk” for COVID-19, according to the OCTA Research Group.