THE Department of Health (DOH) seems ambivalent on the question of whether health workers should be given a second booster shot to bolster their defenses against COVID-19, the public health scourge that continues to attack mankind, particularly in China where it all started.
According to the DOH, a total of 592,202 of the country’s eligible A1 population — almost half of all healthcare workers in the Philippines — have yet to receive the second booster shot.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire, DOH officer-in-charge, told a media forum on Tuesday that they are still encouraging health workers who have not taken their second booster jabs to comply.
The official encouragement, however, seems to fall on deaf ears, going by the number of workers still refusing to take a second booster shot, despite the fact that their sector interacts with COVID-positive patients more frequently than others.
‘It is just our luck that COVID-19 has not been returning with a vengeance in the Philippines, unlike in China where residents are still grappling with it nearly three years since it was declared a global pandemic.’
The standing policy of the DOH is to limit the inoculation of the second booster jabs to senior citizens, immunocompromised individuals and healthcare workers. The health authorities said the added protection was rolled out due to the waning immunity provided for by the primary series and the first booster.
Given the lack of interest even by the health sector personnel to receive the second booster shot, Vergeire is content with just reiterating official assurances that the first booster jab “gives you enough protection, and the protection is still there to guard against having these severe and critical infections.”
In the end, the acting DOH chief said: “We still encourage [health workers], but we cannot mandate for them to have the second booster and tell them they cannot work. We cannot do that as a precondition because as I’ve said, there is still evidence that the first booster shots protects them already from severe and critical illness.”
It is this ambivalence, these loose protocols and tentative procedures that are carry-overs from the days of Health Secretary Francisco Duque III that fuel speculations from critics that the health department is remiss in its task of safeguarding the population from the onslaught of the pandemic.
Around 4.05 million individuals have been infected with the SARS CoV-2 virus since 2020, with some 65,094 Filipinos listed as having died from COVID-19.
It is just our luck that COVID-19 has not been returning with a vengeance in the Philippines, unlike in China where residents are still grappling with it nearly three years since it was declared a global pandemic.
Important lessons in the fight against this pandemic, such as the 44 million COVID-19 vaccines now written off as wastage, should remain in our collective minds and guide the government in its preparations for the next epidemic.
