At long last!
By DEE...
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“No prisoner can be safe from the rising threats of the highly contagious disease inside the world’s most overcrowded and ill-equipped prison facilities with the most haphazard policies."
The national government has also allowed private enterprises and local government units (LGUs) to procure vaccines for their constituents and employees provided that they sign a tripartite agreement with the national government and vaccine manufacturers. The tripartite agreement is meant to ensure vaccine manufacturers that the national government would cover indemnification and the cost of adverse effects.
At first glance, it seems reassuring that the Philippines’ cumulative 884,783 COVID-19 cases as of April 13 is just around half of Indonesia’s 1.58 million infections. However, the Philippines’ 165,534 active cases is the highest in the region and more than Indonesia’s 108,599 active cases – even if Indonesia’s population is over two-and-a-half times bigger.
As the number of cases surged enough to put the Philippines ahead of other countries in Southeast Asia; as millions of workers lost their jobs; as schools and businesses ceased operations and even closed permanently; and as the economy spiraled into a recession, apparently at a loss over what to do, Mr. Duterte on a number of occasions declared that only a vaccine could stop the pandemic.
More importantly, the AFP said its own investigation could help the military improve its own rules, regulations and policies. In backing off, such a commendable objective was dropped.
Did President Duterte blow the whistle? A week ago it was he who disclosed that many soldiers had already been inoculated with vaccine against COVID-19. Immediately there was widespread uproar: How did that happen? Who got the vaccines in? Where did they come from,...
Health advocate and community doctor Josh San Pedro said that mass testing remains important amid the increasing number of cases, and the new coronavirus variant, which is proving to be more transmissible. After all, vaccines have no 100 efficacy rate and that chances of getting infected remain.
Safety assessments under the corporate dominated scientific milieu are grossly inadequate and oftentimes erroneous. Pre-clinical studies and clinical trials are done or sponsored by the very corporations who sell the vaccines and they do not adequately address the plausible adverse effects that cannot be detected by the corporate sponsored studies.
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