Around 15 million Filipinos who belong to the most vulnerable sectors are targeted to be vaccinated with a fourth dose of Covid-19 vaccine by the national government, a task force official working on the pandemic response revealed Wednesday, April 20.

Sec. Carlito Galvez Jr., vaccine czar and chief implementer of the National Task Force (NTF) Against Covid-19, said the fourth dose of Covid-19 vaccine will be administered after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally gave the green light to the NTF’s recommendation.

“We already got an approval to amend the EUA so we can start administering the fourth dose or the second booster shot for the vulnerable sector. What we are waiting now is for the recommendation of the HTAC while the NVOC and DOH have already released the guidelines,” Galvez said at a “Kapihan sa Manila Bay” forum.

Among those eligible for the fourth dose are the healthcare workers (A1), senior citizens (A2), and persons with comorbidities (A3).

But before proceeding with the administration of the fourth vaccine dose, it is worthy to look at the status of the third dose inoculation.

‘Slow’

During the forum, Galvez described the status of the administration of the third dose as “really slow.”

From a target population of 90 million, the government has fully vaccinated 67,100,671 individuals (74.58 percent) as of Tuesday, April 19.

Out of those fully vaccinated, there are a total of 72 million Filipinos eligible for the third dose. However, only 12,736,958 individuals actually returned to the vaccination centers to have themselves boosted. This only accounts for 17.65 percent of the target of the government.

“Talagang medyo mabagal po ang uptake ng third dose o booster dose (The uptake of the third dose or booster dose is really slow),” Galvez said.

Galvez had been pushing local government units (LGUs) to ramp up their vaccination efforts, particularly in encouraging fully vaccinated individuals to get their booster shots.

The vaccine czar explained that the efficiency of the vaccines obtained by most of the fully vaccinated individuals have now been decreased or have waned. Experts previously said that the efficiency of the vaccines usually wanes after six months that’s why getting a third dose or booster shot is necessary to increase it again.

But since only 17 percent of the target population have been boosted, the remaining 83 percent or about 60 million Filipinos have now lower resistance to the disease, thus, putting them at risk in case of a new surge.

Lockdown and 'ayuda'

The Department of Health projected that the active cases in Metro Manila could balloon to 500,000 by mid-May due to the continuous neglect of the minimum public health standards.

What Galvez was avoiding in puahing to raise the booster vaccination was a situation similar to Shanghai – the most populous city in China – which has been placed under a strict lockdown for a month now due to a surge of cases.

According to the Department of Foreign Affairs, overseas Filipinos in Shanghai were appealing for food and other forms of assistance since they were barred from going out of their homes and their finances were affected since work had to be stopped to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

This is reminiscient to the predicament that were experienced by the Filipinos in the past two years when the government had to shut the entire country to avert the rising cases of the coronavirus.

A nationwide lockdown, according to Galvez in previous interviews, is no longer an option for the Philippines since it would hurt the economy and the government had very limited funds to provide “ayuda” to those who will be affected.

Galvez then urged the public to get their booster shots now while supplies are plenty so that the Philippines would not have to go through a similar experience with Shanghai.

“Kung mahal niyo ang bayan natin, ang pamilya niyo, magpabakuna na at magpabooster na kayo (If you really love our country and your family, get vaccinated and get the booster shots),” he said.