Nardo Samson posing with granddaughter Kiara Bautista, May 2017.

Jan Daniel Belmonte.

Eighty-year-old Nardo Samson, a retired policeman, lay dying in the back of a makeshift ambulance.

Samson's grandson Jan Daniel Belmonte told NPR his grandfather's health took a worrying turn after Samson's entire household in Valenzuela City in northern Metro Manila was diagnosed with the coronavirus in late March.

The "worst," he says, was a hospital an hour and half away, where "there were 250 people in line.".

"By the time he got to the hospital, he immediately went into a coma," says Belmonte.

Nardo Samson died on April 6 and was cremated with the family unable to say a proper goodbye.

Left: Nardo Samson celebrates a birthday with his family, Oct.

2017; Right: Nardo Samson in his police uniform c.

"It's just a bunch of old men giving each other pats on the back saying that they're doing their job," he says.

Convocar says with entire households testing positive for the coronavirus, she's now counseling families on the need to pick who among them will get the scarce hospital bed if one is needed.

According to the Reuters COVID-19 Tracker, the Philippines has administered 2,129,185 doses of COVID-19 vaccine so far.

Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Teddy Locsin, Jr., told NPR that his government failed to secure the Pfizer vaccine just months into the pandemic because it had fumbled the finalization of a contract with the drugmaker.

"Please don't blame yourselves for over-ordering," Locsin says.

The countries like us that hemmed and hawed — well, now we're there." And by "there," he means the grim place the Philippines now finds itself as a result of its painfully slow vaccine rollout.

But Locsin says thankfully there's currently an overabundance of vaccines in rich countries — and his expectation is that they will share.

It should not be a gift, Locsin adds, but rather the Philippines ought to buy the vaccines.

The hope is that the vaccine will soon be able to make a dent in the terrible toll — although getting the doses is just one step.

The survey also found that the vaccine developed by Pfizer was the most preferred by those willing to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Only 22% of the respondents favored the vaccine developed by Chinese drugmaker Sinovac, which has been the Philippines' primary vaccine to date.

Locsin says the COVID-19 catastrophe in India has upended plans to ship millions of doses to countries like the Philippines.

Locsin himself has not been vaccinated yet, and won't likely get a shot until the Moderna doses — the vaccine ordered for the Foreign Affairs Department — arrive in the Philippines.

Convocar insists that the country must stop "romanticizing" Filipino "resilience" as a means to overcome a pandemic that has devastated the economy, shuttered schools and killed more than 18,000 people in the Philippines.

By sad coincidence, Jan Daniel Belmonte's grandmother Estelita Samson found a bed just days after her husband Nardo Samson died from the lack of one.

Upon learning he had contracted COVID-19, Samson had immediately contacted the Fatima University Medical Center to be put on a waiting list in the event he needed a hospital bed.