Residents prepare after the city government ordered a 4-day lockdown, starting March 11, in Barangay 351, Sta. Cruz, Manila on March 10, 2021 to curb the rising COVID-19 cases in the community. Jonathan Cellona, ABS-CBN News
MANILA - Marikina City Mayor Marcelino Teodoro on Friday expressed disappointment with the slow rollout of COVID-19 vaccines a year into the pandemic.
"The problem really is with the supply of the vaccine and the [national] government should, I think, it's imperative to address this problem of supply," he told ANC.
Teodoro was reacting to the statement of Health Secretary Francisco Duque III that the inoculation drive was not quick enough.
Over 114,000 people have so far received the shots more than a week after the country launched its vaccination program. Of those inoculated, 83,000 are health-care workers.
In Marikina City, Teodoro said they had listed nearly 5,000 medical frontliners for the vaccination.
"We're only able to inoculate around 1,500. So, that's not even half of the number of medical frontliners that we intended to be inoculated," he said.
On Feb. 28, the Philippines received its first batch of COVID-19 vaccine from China's Sinovac Biotech, with 600,000 doses. Through the vaccine-sharing COVAX facility, some 526,000 vaccines from AstraZeneca arrived few days later.
Faced with surging coronavirus infections, the country aims to vaccinate up to 70 million of its 108 million people this year to achieve herd immunity and reopen the economy.
Vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. had said the Philippines is acquiring 161 million doses of coronavirus vaccine by year-end.
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