The head of the Department of Science and Technology, Renato Solidum Jr., said he would support any move to increase the budget of the Department of Health that would allow it to procure updated vaccines to protect the public from the new “Flirt” variants of COVID-19, and the same time also called on Congress to pass the bill establishing the proposed Virology and Vaccine Institute of the Philippines to allow the government to respond more quickly to emerging diseases.
The DOH has said it was already operating on the assumption that the Flirt variants were in the country, following a marked increase in COVID cases from the previous week.
At a DOST event in Manila, Solidum explained that while the monitoring and detection of COVID-19 cases fell under the DOH’s mandate, his department would continue its research on viruses, including new variants of the novel coronavirus. He said the bill creating a virology institute would help the country’s health sector deal with new COVID-19 variants “because the threat of the virus won’t just disappear.”
He noted that the Philippines is a biologically diverse country affected by global warming and exposed to the threat of zoonotic diseases, or illnesses passed from animals to humans. “These chances [of zoonotic diseases] are very high here in the Philippines, which is why we have to be proactive and that is also the reason why we in the DOST are pushing for the establishment of our country’s own virology and vaccine institute,” he added.
The bill is among the legislative priorities of President Marcos Jr. and has been identified as one of the 20 priority bills of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council.
While our collective guard may have been lowered as life has seemingly returned to normal after the pandemic, the current spike in COVID infections emphasizes the need to still always be ready, and having a Virology and Vaccine Institute would certainly help the Philippines face future outbreaks. Hopefully our government works to get one for the nation, before another outbreak or pandemic catches us off guard once more.*
