President Duterte said it was okay for him that some Filipinos have refused to get their coronavirus jabs since “this is a democracy,” but he also stressed that getting vaccinated could “save your life.”
“Kayong mga ayaw magpabakuna, okay lang sa akin. Ganito ‘yan eh, ideally talagang—kung talagang (To those who don’t want to get vaccinated, it’s okay with me. It’s like this, ideally really—if really)— what would we say, pilitin ng gobyerno (the government forces it), but this is a democracy. We cannot arrest you if you go out or I cannot enforce totally a rule na huwag kayong (that you don’t)—unless, of course, ‘yung mga —sa mga barangay (the ones—in the barangay),” he addressed Filipinos during his weekly late night Talk to the People.
It’s different in other countries, Duterte said, as he compared the Philippines to Saudi Arabia that can force its citizens to stay indoors if it wants to.
“But Saudi Arabia is not the kind of setup that we have,” he lamented.
The Chief Executive urged Filipinos to get vaccinated at the “first opportunity” because “it might save your life.
“Ang panahon—ang buhay, panahon-panahon mamatay. Pero kung may bakuna ka, baka, baka abutin ka pa sa katandaan (The times—our life, if it’s your time to die. But if you have a vaccine, maybe, maybe you will reach old age),” he said.
READ: Duterte urges Filipinos to get vaccinated: ‘COVID-19 is here to stay’
The coronavirus, he warned, will “continue to claim lives,” acknowledging that “the basic problem, the fundamental fear is that it is here to stay and it has changed our lives from hereon.”
While he respects Dr. Romeo Quijano, a retired professor of the University of the Philippines’ College of Medicine’s Pharmacology and Toxicology Department who said that the vaccines are more harmful than the virus itself, Duterte called on Filipinos to listen to him and have themselves vaccinated.
Vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. said six million more COVID-19 vaccines are expected to arrive in the country this month, which will ramp up the government’s vaccination efforts.
READ: 6M COVID-19 vaccines arriving this week — Galvez
Upon arrival in the country, the vaccines will be delivered immediately to PharmaServ Express’ cold-chain facility in Marikina City for temporary storage before they are distributed to various parts of the country.
Galvez recently lauded the cold-chain facility as “world class” as it is capable of storing different brands of COVID-19 vaccines with different temperature requirements.
As of August 15, the country has fully vaccinated 12,565,017 people, or 11.4 percent of the population. Some 15,241,864 people, or 13.8 percent of the population, already received their first dose.
With the country now averaging almost 500,000 jabs a day, herd immunity or the inoculation of 70 percent of the population will be achieved by April 2022.