(Reuters) MANILA – According to one rumour circulating in the Philippines, the coronavirus vaccine will allow President Rodrigo Duterte to kill people at the push of a button.
Elsewhere in the country of 108 million, memories of a dengue vaccine that has been banned locally are putting people off the idea of immunisation even before the campaign begins.
“Many kids got sick after receiving that vaccine,” 62-year-old Crisanta Alipio said of the ill-fated vaccine against dengue, a mosquito-borne disease that can be deadly.
She said she was afraid of the novel coronavirus but even more afraid of vaccination.
The Philippines is only due to start immunisations next month despite suffering Southeast Asia’s second-worst outbreak of the coronavirus with more than half a million infections and over 10,000 deaths.
But officials acknowledge they have an uphill struggle to persuade many people to take it, on top of the logistical difficulties in reaching 2,000 inhabited islands with a precarious health system in the Southeast Asian archipelago…. Read More
