G-Watch Report on the State of Vaccination in the Philippines

This report presents G-Watch’s multi-level scanning of the state of implementation of the government’s COVID -19 vaccination program at the national and local levels within the first few months of the rollout. While there have been status reports of aggregated data at the national level, there has been a gap of consolidated independent information on what is happening in the vaccination efforts on the ground. This G-Watch report aims to show the multi-level dynamics of the implementation of the vaccination that involves international, national and local policy actors and the stake of ordinary citizens who are ultimately affected by the program.

The report has two main parts: the national vaccination status, which also presents the budget for the vaccination program; and the state of local vaccination efforts, which covers local plans, targets, extent of vaccination and level of compliance to citizen entitlements based on G-Watch’s local data-gathering. There are also additional sections that compare vaccine procurements by national and local governments, vaccine brands and state of access to information and other emerging issues and concerns. Key findings and conclusions are recapped and summarized at the end of the report.

The report concludes that though slow and uneven, there has been progress in vaccination at the local level across regions in the country. Yet, the government’s national approach to the COVID-19 that is heavily reliant to external financing to maintain the political leadership’s non-COVID priorities and that which is lacking of social accountability is a threat. Without a strategic pivot from such an approach, the success of the vaccination efforts in the Philippines hangs in the balance.