‘Imagine being able to declare on May 1 that the Philippines has finally hit the all-important target of herd immunity.
Restrictions are significantly
relaxed. The economy is opened.’
WILL vaccines flood the country in time for the polls?
This is the suspicion of a number of my friends who, admittedly, do not look too kindly on the Duterte administration’s pandemic efforts. Maybe to be more precise I should describe them as folks who do not look too kindly on the Duterte administration, period.
They point to the belatedly growing volume of vaccines entering the country, allowing for close to 500,000 jabs in one day. Never mind if the vaccine czar, Sec Carlito Galvez Jr., had promised this number of jabs as early as April-May of this year.
Better late than never.
And most of these vaccines are China-made Sinovac (its actual brand name is Covivax, if I am not mistaken), accounting for more than half of all jabs ever done in the country since March. Sinovac has a controversial reputation, since studies in universities in Europe and the United States seem to show that it is far less effective in generating antibodies compared to the vaccines made by European and American pharmaceutical giants. Even the results of antibody tests that I and a few friends have taken, to compare our levels, show that I as a COVID critical survivor have the highest levels of antibodies (thanks in the main to convalescent plasma treatment), followed by someone who had two jabs of Pfizer and then by someone with two jabs of Sinovac.
We, of course, have to take these tests with some grain of salt given that they do not reveal the whole picture of human immune response; also, we should be conscious of the reality of pharma wars, plus the fact that the Chinese for years have refused to be part of a global program where research results are shared.
Which leaves much of the world guessing — and millions of Filipinos wondering how effective the jabs they got into their arms really are.
We need to reiterate over and over again, though: it is still far, far better to have a jab in your arm than none at all. Especially in the light of the Delta variant.
As the pandemic broke out the concept of herd immunity slowly became part of the language ordinary people started to use in discussing the pandemic. Health experts early on seemed to agree that this meant having 70% of the population immune to a disease through a combination of immunization through vaccination (preferred) and immunization through getting afflicted by the disease. But the emergence in India of Delta, said to be a far more infectious version of the original virus first identified in China, has now had some health experts arguing that herd immunity will require a higher threshold — 80% or 90% even. In a country with a population of 110 million this would mean some 90-99 million Filipinos either vaccinated or COVID survivors (like me).
With our numbers at close to five million fully vaccinated and a little over one million resolved COVID cases, we are woefully far from the 90% immunization level.
The arrival of more doses in the next months and daily and sustained vaccination levels of upwards of 500,000 a day will definitely close that gap. But hitting the target by yearend, as often mentioned by our vaccine czar, is in my eyes highly improbable.
Maybe on or around May 2022 then?
Imagine this scenario: starting January, China floods the Philippines with 50 million doses of Sinovac. These are then deployed all around the country, especially in highly urbanized areas where we congregate. Because of logistics requirements the rollout is spread over a few months and for many, their second jab falls on or around the first week of May which also happens to be, by sheer coincidence, election week.
Imagine the pogi points this will bring to the incumbents!
Imagine being able to declare on May 1 that the Philippines has finally hit the all-important target of herd immunity. Restrictions are significantly relaxed. The economy is opened. It’s a time for fireworks and celebration.
And for a well-deserved reward at the ballot box.
Now,s doesn’t that sound like a good plan??
