More Filipinos are showing confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine as the aggregate of those seeking to be jabbed has increased from 65 percent in January to 75 percent in March 2021, representing 3 out of every 4 Filipinos, according to the Department of Health (DOH).
Responding to a question during an online media forum, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire, however, asserted that this affinity towards vaccines has nothing to do with the arrival of Pfizer vaccines.
Vergeire said that the DOH conducted a survey from March 19 to March 30 to ascertain vaccine sentiment among Filipinos. It asked a simple question: If the Covid-19 vaccine is available, are you willing to have yourself vaccinated? “And 75 percent answered yes,” Vergeire said, without divulging the number of respondents.
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Meanwhile, 85.8 percent responded favorably to the second question: If you know that the Covid-19 vaccine is safe and efficacious are you willing to be vaccinated? “Even without the Pfizer vaccine during this time, the confidence in Covid vaccines of our countrymen is already high,” Vergeire said.
She added that other factors contributing to the increased confidence are the orderly rollout of the vaccines and the number of people in communities who have received their Covid-19 jabs.
On Friday, 6,784 more cases were recorded, bringing the total number of infections in the country to 1,131,467. Meanwhile, the recovery data was 2972 and 137 deaths.
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Of the total number of cases, 5.2 percent (58,986) are active cases, 93.1 percent (1,053,523) have recovered, and 1.68 percent (18,958) have succumbed.
Moreover, 71 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.
All laboratories were operational on May 12, 2021, while five labs were not able to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System. (AW)
