Manila Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso has expressed dismay over the “super slow” deployment of vaccines to local government units.
In his late night mayoral address on May 11, Domagoso said the city of Manila has yet to receive its share from the 1.5 million doses of Sinovac vaccines and the two million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines that arrived in the country on May 7 and May 8, respectively.
“Di po mabagal, super bagal yung deployment...lahat ng local government ready mag-deploy (The deployment is not slow, it’s super slow...the local governments are ready to deploy the vaccines) I don’t know why it is taking so long,” Domagoso said.
He said he would understand if the delay is only for two to three days since it has to undergo a process before it is distributed.
“Di dumarating, di ko alam kung pinapatubuan pa nila sa kanilang refrigerator itong mga bakunang ito (It’s not coming, I don’t know if they are trying to grow the vaccines in their refrigerator),” the mayor said.
“If you believe that vaccination is the solution to restore the economy, bumalik sa normal ang buahy ng tao, ang bakuna hindi dapat pinatatagal kung saang bodega. (for the people’s lives to go back to normal, the vaccines should not be kept long in storage),” he added.
Domagoso said the Pfizer vaccines also arrived in the city late Tuesday when it was expecting the additional vaccine supply to arrive at 1 p.m.
The city received 1,170 vials of Pfizer vaccines which Domagoso said will be given to residents starting Thursday.