Health experts urged policymakers to continue the fight against misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines as this can help in convincing people, who are still hesitant to take the vaccine, to get inoculated.
The government officials should continue to highlight the importance of vaccines, said Dr. Rontgene Solante, chief of the Adult Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine Unit of San Lazaro Hospital in Manila.
"The challenge here in the Philippines and most likely in the Asia Pacific Region is the vaccine hesitancy. And in fact, the booster uptake here in the Philippines really low," said Solante during a round table discussion organized by the Philippine College of Physicians (PCP) and Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) on Wednesday, April 27.
"And this is driven by much vaccine hesitancy in terms of the adverse events, in terms of waning immunity, and some of these people have less confidence in getting the booster," he added.
Based on the Philippine government's vaccination dashboard, 66.9 million Filipinos are now fully vaccinated against Covid-19 but only 12.9 million people got their third dose or booster shot.
Vaccine hesitancy is not just evident in the Philippines but also in Thailand, said Dr. Sunate Chuenkitmongkol of the Thailand National Vaccine Institute.
"We also have a problem vaccine hesitancy. Like in the Philippines as well, we found that the booster acceptance is low when compared to the primary vaccination. People think that if they receive two doses, it is enough—and don't want to get anymore," she said.
"Even though we have a coverage in primary series of up to 80 percent now, and even if we have the Omicron, the third dose acceptance for even the elderly is only 40 percent. You will see a big gap even if we tried a lot of performance to provide the booster of vaccines for the population," she added.
Solante reiterated that all types of vaccines can provide the necessary protection against the severe form of Covid-19.
"This data is very important, communicating them the importance that vaccines really work. It really works in protecting us against severe infection, protecting us against hospitalization— which are the two most important clinical outcomes that we want to prevent among our population,” he said.
"It is important that policymakers continue to build vaccine confidence the public... In the first year, there were vaccine preferences that if you have a higher utilizing antibody, you are better protected but based on the data, all of these vaccines whether it is a mRNA or virus-vector it has good protection against hospitalization and death," he added.