A recent statement of the World Bank about the vaccination in the Philippines is not fair, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said on Monday.

This was the response of Duque after the World Bank said that the slower vaccination in the Philippines caused the spike of COVID-19 cases.

"First of all I do not know where they got that, because the countries with high vaccine coverage, most of them also have a spike in cases, So we can see from there that we can refute this analysis being offered by the World Bank," he said.

Duque said vaccine supply just stabilized in October of previous year compared to other countries that had stable supply before 2021 but still have high COVID-19 cases.

"They are the manufacturer of these vaccines and despite that, they have high vaccine coverage, 70 percent or 80 percent, others have 90 percent, while others already have their fourth booster dose. But we can see that the number of their COVID-19 cases still spike," he said

Duque added that the recent onslaught of Typhoon ''Odette'' also affected vaccination.

"We also have Typhoon 'Odette', while they do not have Typhoon ;

'Odette', here we have six regions affected, the vaccination was suspended because of the damage to infrastructure and electricity. So I think that it is unfair for them to say that the vaccination coverage is slow which causes the spike (of the cases)," he said.

"That is not the case, there were many countries with high (vaccine) coverage but the cases continue to spike, 500,000 to one million in other countries, while here so far the highest that we have recorded in the seven day moving average is just 34,000 to 36,000. But now in the NCR it went down so what we are doing is right," he added.

Duque said based on their latest report the first dose administered has reached 59.7 million, representing about 76 percent of the total target population of 78 million.

"Those with full dose or complete vaccines is 57.2 million thereabouts, representing about 73 percent of the target population of 78 million," he said. Robina Asido/DMS