By Macy Grace Clores
GET-TOGETHER - A group of friends enjoys their outdoor dining experience before the pandemic. | Photo Source: Crushpixel
The COVID-19 pandemic officially hit the Philippines on January 30, 2020. It is when the first case of the said virus has been detected in the country. Following that, everything
escalated quicker than anyone else could imagine, even the government.
With the non-stop increase of cases, conflicts in different sectors of the government arise and with more than a year of shifting quarantine systems, should the Filipinos hope for the light at the end of the tunnel or will our fellowmen continue to suffer obtaining the said light in despair?
We all have to admit that we miss our old life. We miss the chaotic and crowded places that we used to face every day of our lives. We miss attending gatherings, music festivals, parties, and lastly, we miss walking around without a mask preventing us from breathing fresh air our nature has to offer.
For the Philippines to go back to its natural flow of life, we need to acquire herd immunity. Herd immunity or community immunity is when a large percent of a certain area/country is already immune to a specific disease or a huge percentage of the population is already vaccinated to fight a certain spreading disease hence, to be able to achieve this we need to vaccinate 70 million Filipinos.
According to the DOH we will attain the herd immunity by December of this year. “We will have a better Christmas this year,” said the Vaccine Czar Carlito Galvez Jr.
However, as of the moment, only 214,792 Filipinos are fully vaccinated, or just 0.31% of the 70,000,000 target. Moreover 1,397,638 Filipinos received at least one dosage, with us having a supply of 3,525,600 doses of vaccines. It is almost two months since the country received its first batch of vaccines but our current supply is just enough for 1,760,000 Filipinos or 2.52% of the 70 million target. The Philippines is vaccinating 43,835 people a day, with this rate and realistically speaking, it will take us eight and a half years before we acquire the goal of herd immunity so it is also possible for us to go back to normal in December 2029.
To achieve the “better Christmas” for our people we need to speed up the vaccinating process with 560,000 Filipinos vaccinated a day.
We have lived the phrase “Filipino time” so much that compared to our neighbouring
countries, we are slow in buying, getting and distributing the vaccines having to prove that
we are late for everything. Perhaps the result with our government patching the problem with a military approach rather than putting medical people in charge.
We are in a pandemic, a medical crisis and not war.
As of the moment, the light is nowhere to be found. Filipinos can’t do anything but persuade the people sitting on the throne to move as fast as they can to save more lives and bring back how the world should revolve for all of us.
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