The pandemic seems to be also sharpening the marketing skills of vaccine promoters.
A mayor of a rural town in the Philippines is offering a cow in a raffle, for people are hesitant about taking the Covid-19 vaccine.
The raffle begins in July with those taking the jab — in the San Luis farming community of the northern province of Pampanga – entering a monthly draw for a cow worth about PHP30,000, according to Mayor Jayson Sagum.
Since Filipinos like participating in games of chance, the year-long raffle is looking at ensuring majority of the 60,000-strong rural community’s adults get vaccinated, Sagum stated while expressing hopes of finding donors that would provide or pay for the prize cows.
He said while lack of vaccine supply had led to barely three percent of San Luis residents taking the jab, surveys revealed that around half of the town’s elderly people were worried about reported adverse side-effects of the vaccine.
The authorities have tried various ways of motivating the people to get vaccinated and this included giveaways comprising cash, food packs and even jewellery.
The latest bovine prize was being regarded as more appropriate in a community, where majority of the residents are involved in rice, duck and tilapia fish farming.
Sagum said the raffles will be live-streamed on the town’s social media pages and winners can use the cattle on their farms or slaughter them and share the meat with the community.
The ill-fated rollout of the dengue vaccine Dengvaxiain 2016 was seen to have led to rumors of children dying from that jab and highlighted the public’s lack of confidence in vaccines across the Philippines.
A recent survey revealed that about 60 percent of Filipinos were unwilling to be vaccinated inoculated against Covid-19.
The Philippines, which has the second-highest rate of coronavirus cases in Southeast Asia with more than 1.2 million infections, had started a vaccination drive in March that had been slowed by delayed deliveries and fears over vaccine safety.
