MAKATI City Mayor Abigail Binay on Monday, June 28, 2021, appealed for understanding and urged social media users to stop spreading the video that showed a nurse failing to inject the vaccine against coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).
“Please have pity on the nurse. She volunteered her services to accelerate the vaccination of our residents,” Binay said in a statement.
She also asked the public not to make unfounded accusations against the nurse.
“We appeal to those spreading the video. Some even accused the nurse of selling the vaccine. Please don’t do that, especially if you don’t have evidence,” Binay said.
She also said some people are politicizing the incident and using it to malign the vaccination program.
Binay said it was “human error on the part of the volunteer nurse that was immediately corrected.”
She confirmed an earlier Department of Health (DOH) statement that the woman in the video eventually received the vaccine as she showed the video to the vaccination team.
“She (vaccine recipient) herself said that we should not dismiss the nurse. We ask simply for the public’s understanding,” Binay said.
Read: DOH investigates failed inoculation
She noted that healthcare frontliners have been battling the Covid-19 pandemic for more than a year already.
“Our frontliners are but human. They get tired. They make mistakes. What is important is that the mistake was corrected. She apologized and her apology was accepted,” Binay said.
DOH Secretary Francisco Duque III earlier Monday said that an investigation is being conducted on the incident.
He said it “is being taken seriously and immediate improvements in the protocol shall be made to ensure" that chances of this happening again would be limited. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)