Vice President and opposition leader Leni Robredo on Wednesday encouraged the public to get vaccinated against the new coronavirus disease as vaccines are expected to arrive in the coming days.

In a video message posted on her official Facebook page, Robredo assured the people that the COVID-19 vaccine is safe and free for all despite the fears and concerns hounding the country’s COVID-19 vaccination program.

“Hindi dapat tayo matakot. Alam mo 'yan 'yung madaming pangamba sa ating FB page kapag nagpo-post ako about bakuna, maraming questions about diyan (We should not be scared. You know, there are many concerns on our FB page whenever I post about the vaccine, there are many questions about that),” she said.

Robredo was referring to the vaccine’ s safety protocol and whether getting inoculated means that the recipient will get a live version of the SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

The vice president explained that in the four types of available COVID-19 vaccines, none of them will use a live and weakened version of the virus. Instead, what the vaccine will do is trigger an immune response once the body encounters the real virus.

During her Sunday radio show, Robredo spoke to a Filipino hairdresser/nurse in the United Kingdom who recently got vaccinated. 

The Filipina shared that after receiving two vaccine doses, she didn’t feel any harmful effect. “She said she felt normal. It’s like a normal vaccine. It’s like the after-effects of the vaccines we get here in the Philippines, it’s just the same,” Robredo said.

The UK-based Filipina, who works at a senior care facility, shared that others experienced chills, fever, and numbness in the arm where the vaccine was injected. She added that the elderly in the United Kingdom were the first to get the vaccine. 

“Wala namang side effects na kailangan nating katakutan (There are no side effects that we should be scared of),” she said.

Robredo’s sister is a nurse in the United States assigned to the hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU). After recently receiving the vaccine, she shared that she only felt chills after the second dose and that she felt better after taking paracetamol.

Meanwhile, Robredo said the vaccines should be free for everyone ages 18 and above. Doctors recommend the vaccine to be given only to people 18 and above because that what has been approved. 

The opposition leader noted that the government has already earmarked P82.5 billion for its vaccination program. Out of that amount, P70 billion will be for the purchase of the vaccines. 
“That should be enough,” she said in Filipino.

The vaccine will be life-changing, Robredo said, but also cautioned that people will still need to wear a mask, practice social distancing, avoid enclosed spaces, and frequently wash their hands even after getting vaccinated. 

“Even if we get vaccinated, we can still pass the virus. But there’s a big probability that we will not show severe symptoms. We can still be a carrier (of the virus). Because we can still be a carrier, we can still infect those who haven’t gotten vaccinated yet,” she said.The initial batch of COVID-19 vaccines from the COVAX facility is set to arrive by mid-February. It would be 117,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which would require subzero temperatures for storage.