Senate President Vicente C. Sotto III on Tuesday said positive pandemic responses by the Duterte administration should not be linked to politics and the 2022 elections.
Sotto issued this terse reply to a query by Senate reporters on a statement of Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque that the good pandemic response would boost administration candidates and would pose problems for opposition candidates.
‘’I wish we'd stop linking the pandemic or the responses to it to politics and the forthcoming elections. Not good! It could also backfire! Lets just work well for our people!’’ Sotto said.
On the reluctance of some people being vaccinated, Senator Aquilino Pimentel III said that people should not be forced t5o be inoculated with COVID-19 vaccine.
The former Senate President reasoned out that:
1. The vaccines are in a trial stage, hence we are therefore practically forcing Filipinos to participate in the trial phase of the vaccines
2. Vaccination requires the introduction into a healthy human body (healthy in the sense of not being sick of Covid-19) of chemicals. I don't think we can force that.
3. There will always be people "not qualified" to get the vaccine because of health or religion reasons hence a literal 100 percent compliance to vaccination can never be achieved.