Presidential bets on COVID-19 response: No sense of urgency, mass vaccination not prioritizedMANILA, Philippines — A presidential aspirant believes that the Philippine government should have done more in moving urgently against COVID-19 when it was not yet a pandemic, while another says the country should have focused on mass vaccination efforts to prevent repeated lockdowns. "There are a lot of good things that the administration did to respond to the pandemic, but the main problem was that there was no sense of urgency. According to her, the country did not act quickly when COVID-19 was still considered an epidemic in other countries. For Manny Pacquiao, the standard bearer of the Cebu-based Abag Promdi, the government should have prioritized mass vaccination efforts at the onset of the pandemic. 24 Oras earlier reported that the program extended the invite to the five presidential aspirants leading in the surveys.

Source: Philippine Star January 23, 2022 14:32 UTC