Getting the economic workforce jabbed

Social media, indeed, has proven once again to be an effective channel to influence public opinion. As health workers, senior citizens, and people with co-morbidities took to Facebook or Twitter to bare their arms to show their first (or second) jabs against the virus, more Filipinos now want to get in the queue too.

Even if the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines still enjoy an edge as the preferred brands, the absence of life-threatening stories in people who took a China-made Sinovac inoculation is likewise boosting the latter’s public acceptance.

The Philippines is now on its fifth month of a vaccination rollout, with over 11 million people already receiving at least one shot. The pace is agonizingly slow and very much dependent on arriving shipments, and even if just a few hundred thousands arrive, are covered by the media with much fanfare fit for headline news.

Earlier initiatives by the private sector to bring in vaccines are seen to improve the vaccination rate in the next two months. Many have done so pikit-mata unmindful of the higher cost burden of having to “donate” a substantial portion of their orders to the government’s nationwide program.

The cost for a private sector-acquired jab has consequently almost doubled, but big businesses realize that getting their workers protected at the earliest against the virus, even at higher costs, is much better than dealing with the possibility of permanently closing down.

Focusing on MSME workers

However, only four to eight million people are taken cared of in the vaccination programs of conglomerates like San Miguel Corp., Ayala Corp. International Container Terminal Services, Inc., Metro Pacific Investments Corp., and food chains like Golden Arches (for MacDonald’s) and Jollibee Foods Corp.

This leaves some 24 million workers, who are employed in micro, small, and medium-sized companies, to secure their jabs through local governments. Many of them are part of the most vulnerable sectors, where measures that call for social distancing while traveling or in the work place are weakest.

MSME workers, too, live in the densest parts of communities where living conditions are not ideally suited to ward off a virus spread, especially if it were to be one of the newer strains that have been reported more virulent and contagious.

The Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) has already extended its A4 category to include all government and private sector workers, informal sector workers, and those who work in private households who need to physically report to work.

This essentially folds the B list into the A category, thus ensuring that 50 percent of the country’s 110 million-strong population are vaccinated before the end of the year. The remaining half of the population, mostly the youth, should be up for inoculation next year to allow them to resume classroom learning safely.

Over-optimistic announcements

Two major hurdles continue to confront the government’s free vaccination campaign: supply and hesitancy.

Vaccines procured or received as donation from other countries or institutions rarely go through our many regulatory agencies without delays deviating from the originally announced schedule. So far, only about 15 million doses have been distributed to local governments.

About 13 million are expected to arrive this month, with most of the supply promised for distribution last month. Such over-optimistic pronouncements have unduly inconvenienced local governments’ scheduled vaccinations, prompting many to issue apologies for any rescheduling.

Preparations for vaccinations include booking venues and mobilizing doctors and nurses. The latter is now an emerging issue after the Department of Health (DOH) reportedly tightened requirements on jabbers after an unfortunate incident where a health worker was caught on video injecting a needle, but not pushing the plunger on the arm of a recipient.

Local governments are also apprehensive that as more vaccines are distributed to them, there will not be enough health workers available to man vaccination sites.

Indecisiveness

While more people are now willing to take the jab, a sizeable number are still on the fringe of indecisiveness. Senior citizens and those with co-morbidities, tagged as the most at risk of going for intensive care once infected, are still below the desired numbers.

Only 15 percent of about eight million registered senior citizens have received their first shot, and of this, a substantial number have not returned for their second all-important dose.

For people who suffer from ailments that make them more vulnerable to COVID-19, a poor understanding of how vaccines can protect them – and not exacerbate their current condition – continues to feed on their hesitancy. To this, the DOH needs to mount a more effective campaign.

Stories about isolated cases of adverse reaction to the jab, fake vaccines, and the purported rise of a syndicated vaccine-for-sale crime gangs are widening the credibility gap of the government’s vaccination program.

Dismal failure

It’s not as if we don’t know what ails the Philippine economy during this pandemic. Many countries that have successfully rolled out their vaccination programs are already upwardly revising their economic projections this year, while our government continues to dismally fail at finding the right solutions and instituting the correct measures.

We should pay better attention to the World Bank’s lowered GDP growth forecast this year of 4.7 percent for the Philippines from a previous projection of 5.5 percent. We must get our act together and make the right push to get this vaccination rollout going towards the right direction.

Otherwise, we will truly find ourselves among the world’s dregs, and it’s not because we were poor and unproductive, but because we were stupid.

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Should you wish to share any insights, write me at Link Edge, 25th Floor, 139 Corporate Center, Valero Street, Salcedo Village, 1227 Makati City. Or e-mail me at [email protected]. For a compilation of previous articles, visit www.BizlinksPhilippines.net.