A Catholic prelate on Thursday said there is a need to be prudent when it comes to the issue of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine.
Bishop Oscar Florencio, vice chairman of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines Episcopal Commission on Health Care, said this following the report that the United Kingdom granted emergency use approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
"We need prudence too as to whether it is really the right medicine or the right time to administer it," he said in an interview.
"One should not just reason out emergency cases, we have been already in the emergency times," added Florencio.
The dignity of a person, he said, should also be given paramount importance.
"Anything that should be given or applied should be in the view of healing not just to be experimentation otherwise it will degrade the dignity," he added.
President Duterte has already issued an executive order allowing the Food and Drug Administration authority to issue an emergency use authorization (EUA) for COVID-19 vaccines.