The government is “confident” it would achieve in the first week of 2022—January 1-7—its COVID-19 vaccination target for last year, an official said Monday.
Authorities had eyed fully inoculating 54 million people by the end of 2021. As of Jan. 2, some 49.8 million of the Philippines’ 109 million people were fully vaccinated, according to data from the health department.
National Task Force Against COVID-19 deputy chief implementer Vince Dizon told a televised public hearing: “We know the difficulty that various regions went through, especially Region 7 and 8, and some parts of Mindanao, because of typhoon Odette, so we need to cope with that.”
Odette, the 15th storm to hit the country in 2021, struck in mid-December, and was the strongest typhoon and left nearly 400 dead, damaged about half a million homes, and prompted the government to declare a state of calamity over 6 regions.
Carlito Galvez, the country’s vaccination chief, noted on Sunday that wealthy nations cornered the bulk of the limited vaccine supply during the early months of 2021.
“When we rolled out our National Vaccination Program in March, we could only manage to administer less than 800,000 jabs. Also during that time, we were only receiving less than a million doses monthly,” he said in a statement.
“But as our country started to get a steady supply of bigger vaccine shipments, our vaccination throughput also exponentially increased. We are now capable of vaccinating 1 to 2 million Filipinos daily and receiving around 2 million COVID-19 vaccines every day,” he added.
Galvez also noted that Metro Manila had vaccinated 100 percent of its target population.
Authorities will prioritize administering booster shots for the elderly and people with comorbidity, as well as ramping up the vaccination of minors, said Dizon.
Meanwhile, Dizon said the government believed boosting its vaccination program against coronavirus disease 2019 would help the country in managing the new surge with the presence of the Omicron variant.
During the Laging Handa briefing, Dizon said the National Task Force Against COVID-19 would apply the same strategy it did during the Delta variant surge now that the health department sees a significant increase in daily cases.
“But we need to remember that we have been through this. This is already the fourth surge since 2020. We have gone through the Delta surge the past few months, and it was when we are still in the middle of our vaccination,” he said.
Dizon urged unvaccinated Filipinos to get their COVID-19 jabs as new strains of the virus will target those who have not yet received their vaccines.
With the abundant supply of COVID-19 vaccines, Dizon also encouraged vaccinated individuals to get their booster shots.
As the country fell short of its target to vaccinate 54 million Filipinos by the end-2021, the NTF official said this target might be achieved during the first week of January.
He said the onslaught of Odette in Visayas and Mindanao had also affected the vaccine rollout of the government.
“Our target is at least 70 million have received their first dose by end-January,” Dizon said.
The NTF also aims to give full COVID-19 jabs to 70 million Filipinos beginning March this year, Dizon added.
The presidential adviser said the government would also start the vaccination of children aged 5 to 11 years once the country received its vaccine orders from Pfizer, which has a different formulation compared to COVID-19 jabs for adults.
“We are following that up to Pfizer. We are also seeing that even the children exposed in densely populated areas are getting infected by
Covid-19,” Dizon said.
Dizon emphasized that while the government was now strengthening its Prevent-Detect-Isolate-Treat-Reintegrate (PDTIR) strategy, he urged Filipinos to strictly follow health protocols such as wearing face masks, sanitizing, and avoiding crowded areas.
He added the public violated minimum health standards during parties and get-together events during the Christmas and New Year
celebrations.
Meanwhile, Philippine National Police chief, Gen. Dionardo Carlos, reminded police officers to take their booster shots as long as they
were available.
“We continue to educate our PNP personnel regarding the benefits of having their booster jabs. In the same way that we were able to
convince them to get their Anti-COVID vaccines, we will still follow such a strategy,” Carlos said in a statement.
He said the PNP understood the hesitation of a handful of personnel who do not wish to get vaccinated, but the surge in the daily COVID-19
cases should serve as a lesson for everyone that “there is a pressing need to protect ourselves from the severe effects of the virus.”
The PNP’s 215,801 personnel have been fully vaccinated while 8,775 have received their first dose and some 1,534 remain unvaccinated.
“Police are considered as front-liners in the government’s COVID response because their duty puts them in direct interaction with
people while securing the peace and order in every community. We don’t want to have sick law enforcers for it can affect their performance,” Carlos said.
As of Monday, the PNP’s active COVID-19 cases have also climbed to 57 after recording eight new infections.
The police force also logged three new recoveries, bringing the total recoveries to 42,110, while the death toll still stands at 125.
In other developments Dizon said the government would stick with risk-based COVID-19 testing amid the emergence of the more transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
Dizon made the response when asked of the suggestion of Bayan Muna Representative Carlos Zarate that the government should provide free mass testing in areas where there is a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Risk-based testing means providing free RT-PCR tests for those with COVID-19 symptoms and those who are exposed to a COVID-19 case.
“RT-PCR COVID-19 test is free if you are covered under the said risk classification, and this is based on what our experts recommended. We
have limited resources. Just imagine. Testing 100,000 individuals in a day at P2,000 each would mean the government would have to cough out P200 million upfront),” Dizon said during the Laging Handa briefing.
“We don’t have unlimited resources, and the most efficient way to deal with this is to implement risk-based RT-PCR testing as recommended by experts,” he added.
Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong earlier said the city would implement a self-testing policy using an antigen test to fasten detection of COVID-19 cases in the city, dubbed as the Summer Capital of the Philippines, due to its cold weather.
Likewise, Baguio City has also shut its doors to tourists amid the rising COVID-19 cases which health authorities have said could be due to the Omicron variant.
Quizzed if the national government is considering such a policy of self-testing, Dizon said the option was under evaluation.
“This is being studied by our experts and we have to depend on them. But exercising precaution as a matter of personal responsibility remains very important. That said, we have to get vaccinated [against COVID-19], get the booster shot, and observe health protocols of social distancing, wearing a mask and practicing hygiene,” Dizon said.
“We have also prepositioned supply in our laboratories to ensure that we will be able to manage in the event that the surge in COVID-19 cases continues,” he added.
