‘Christmas is coming and I can only hope that by some miracle it will in fact be as Secretary Galvez says, a merry one for all!’
CHRISTMAS is coming and we should be doubly excited. Secretary Carlito Galvez, our vaccine czar, has time and again assured us that it will be a merry Christmas because we will achieve herd immunity by the end of the year.
Which is New Year’s Eve to be exact.
Of course, there are others who think the good secretary is too optimistic, because the pace of vaccinations so far doesn’t show that we will achieve herd immunity by Christmas 2021 — but by Christmas 2022 instead. The reason basically is vaccine supply — with the whole world grabbing whatever vaccines are available, we can only distribute what we can get. And most of what we get, over 80% I think, are the Sinovac vaccines from China which China is more than happy to send over.
At what price, we are not told.
These days there’s a flood of Moderna and Astra-Zeneca vaccines, the preferred brands for many Filipinos who are wary of those made in China. It doesn’t help that social media is full of reports about the Delta and the Delta+ variants of COVID-19, which are said to be more infectious than the original one. And that only Pfizer and Moderna (or did that include AZ too?) are effective against these variants.
But this flood of vaccines is either donated by the United States through the Covavax program, or purchased by the private sector under a buy-one-donate-one-to-the-government scheme. Without these donations, the vaccines we would be flooded with are Sinovac. Which is still better than nothing. But which to others is good but not good enough.
I was willing to be Sinovacced. But since I received convalescent plasma treatment during my 13 days of treatment for COVID in early April, I was told to wait for three months before getting jabbed. And the end of that period coincides with the arrival of AZ and Moderna so it looks like I will be jabbed with one or the other brand on my way to my own merry Christmas.
Millions, however, will still have to wait for their chance.
Latest government figures peg the number of doses distributed at 10 million, 2 million-plus being given to fully vaccinated Filipinos and 7 million as first doses. That’s a major improvement over the numbers we had when the surge happened in Metro Manila last March. But assuming all 10 million doses were given as first and second doses that means 5 million Filipinos are fully vaccinated — still al long ways from the 70 million needed for herd immunity — actually 65 million short. Which will require vaccinating 10 million Filipinos per month for the next six months or 2.5 million per week. We are hitting an all-time high of about 300,000 weekly, I think.
So yes, it will be a merry Christmas for those who have been fully vaccinated, and who most probably will be wishing for a booster shot as a gift from Santa.
But for millions of others?
Christmas is coming and I can only hope that by some miracle it will in fact be as Secretary Galvez says, a merry one for all!
