Senate begins inquiry on COVID-19 vaccination plan

The Senate Committee of the Whole will start its inquiry on the national government's over-all COVID-19 vaccination program today, Jan. 11, with the goal of eliciting more information from the Department of Health (DOH) and other task force leaders on how they intend to roll-out the vaccines to groups included in the priority list.

- HANNAH L. TORREGOZA

Senators said they observed that heads of the state’s task force against COVID-19 are giving vague pronouncements with regards to the availability of vaccines needed to combat the pandemic.

“Do we have a clear vaccination plan? Based on our conversation with doctors and frontliners, it appears (that) we don’t. Frontliners are waiting to know when they would be prioritized in the vaccination program,” Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson said on Radio DZBB.

“The frontliners deserve to know because they are the ones who go to the morgues, they are the ones who attend to COVID patients. They deserve to know if they would be prioritized in the vaccination program,” the senator added.

“There is no reason for the officials concerned to ask for an executive session on this because there is nothing confidential or classified about it. Wala namang kalaban dito. Ang kalaban natin dito ay sakit. Hindi naman yan sasagot, (There’s no enemy here; the enemy here is the disease which is not capable of answering any question), he said.

Lacson said he will inquire as well about the government's “dropping the ball” on at least two opportunities when it could have gotten vaccines from US-based Pfizer and China-based Sinopharm.

In both cases, he noted that the two firms ultimately did not allocate vaccines for the Philippines because Health Secretary Francisco Duque III reportedly did not act promptly.