Infectious disease expert Dr. Rontgene Solante recently said it is “high time” that the country’s general population be required to get COVID-19 booster shots for added protection as more workplaces open and in-person classes resume.
Solante, a member of the Department of Health technical advisory group and an adviser to the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF), made the call for a booster mandate in the wake of the ongoing “weak surge” of infections and the rising positivity rates noted in recent weeks.
“The uptake of boosters is really low. So, I think it’s high time that we mandate booster vaccination for the general population. It has to be mandatory so that we can increase protection,” he said as he noted that the number of Filipinos who received booster shots was less than 20 percent of the target population.
Data from the DOH showed that only 15.8 million Filipinos have received booster shots, while 71.04 million have completed their primary doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. In comparison, our neighbors such as Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand were able to administer booster shots to half of their target population.
Solante also noted the possibility of administering regular COVID-19 jabs to address emerging variants of concern in the future.
He agreed with the assessment of OCTA Research fellow Guido David that there is still no need to declare a higher alert level for Metro Manila or other parts of the country. “The important thing is to increase our boostered population to 70 percent so that there will be less chances of transmission,” he said.
The country’s performance in terms of getting more of its population boostered is disappointing and if national and local government efforts cannot bring up the number, Dr. Solante’s proposal of making it mandatory may become the only option. If don’t want that to happen, then we will have to help our government convince more of our loved ones, friends and neighbors to contribute to the effort to protect the general population by getting COVID booster shots as soon as possible.*
