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MANILA, Philippines – According to a rumor circulating in the Philippines, the coronavirus vaccine will allow President Duterte to kill people with the push of a button.
In other parts of the country of 108 million, memories of a dengue vaccine that has been banned locally are driving people away from the idea of immunization even before the campaign begins.
“A lot of children got sick after getting that vaccine,” said Crisanta Alipio, 62, of the unfortunate vaccine against dengue, a mosquito-borne disease that can be deadly.
He said he was afraid of the new coronavirus, but even more afraid of vaccination.
The Philippines is due to begin immunizations next month despite suffering the second-worst coronavirus outbreak in Southeast Asia with more than half a million infections and more than 10,000 deaths.
But officials acknowledge they have an uphill struggle to persuade many people to take it, in addition to the logistical difficulties in reaching 2,000 inhabited islands with a precarious health system in the Southeast Asian archipelago.
“The messaging has to be very concrete and evidence-based to encourage people to receive the vaccines,” Undersecretary of Health María Rosario Vergeire told Reuters. “We assure Filipinos that the vaccines that are brought in and provided will go through a strict regulatory process.”
Dengvaxia scare
Confidence in vaccines was affected by the controversy over Dengvaxia from the French company Sanofi.
It was swiftly deployed in 2016 to more than 800,000 children to protect them from dengue, and was banned after Sanofi said it could make the disease worse in people who had not previously been exposed to the infection.
That led to two Congressional investigations and more than 100 criminal cases linking the deaths of children to the dengue vaccine, although such links have never been proven.
Sanofi has repeatedly said that Dengvaxia is safe and effective and that the vaccine has been approved for use by the United States and the European Union.
After that episode, the Philippines fell from one of the 10 countries with the highest confidence in vaccines to no more than 70th place. The number of children who were fully vaccinated fell from 85 percent in 2010 to 69 percent in 2019.
To alleviate fears, healthcare workers would hold online and public meetings and receive special training on how to answer questions, Carlito Gálvez Jr., a former army general who leads the campaign against COVID-19, told the Senate.
The goal is to vaccinate 70 million adults this year.
‘Big problem’
In parts of the southern Philippines, the great fear is a state-sponsored death campaign, something that is not completely outlandish in a country where Duterte’s war on drugs has left nearly 6,000 dead since he took office in 2016.
The remote southern regions are the scene of communist and Islamist insurgencies.
“Some of the information shared on Facebook and text messages said that the COVID-19 vaccine contained a microchip [that] it can be controlled remotely by President Duterte, and once he presses a button, the person who received the vaccine will die, ”said Nasser Alimoda, a doctor for the government of the province of Lanao del Sur.
Everywhere, there is concern about the specific vaccines the Philippines plans to use as well, particularly the vaccine from the Chinese company Sinovac Biotech, for which one study showed just over 50 percent effectiveness, while another gave it more than 91. percent.
An opinion poll showed that less than a third of Filipinos were willing to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
“Vaccination programs will be wasted if people refuse to receive the vaccines,” a former health secretary, Esperanza Cabral, told Reuters.
Apasrah Mapupuno, head of the Lanao del Sur government health team, said she had asked dozens of health workers and others if they would roll up their sleeves for a COVID-19 vaccine.
Nobody said “yes”.
“That is the big problem,” Mapupuno said. “How can healthcare workers convince the community to get vaccinated if they don’t sell COVID-19 vaccines themselves?”
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For more information on COVID-19, call the DOH hotline: (02) 86517800 local 1149/1150.
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