"The people are asking for a shot."
It is almost a year and a half already since the entire country was first placed in a lockdown, but it’s a pity that some areas still have to rely to the nearest big cities, the term “nearest” actually a hyperbole, as it could mean no less than a hundred kilometers away, for basic services in fighting the dreaded virus.
Take the case of Eastern Samar, which according to its governor, Ben Evardone, is into the third wave of the COVID-19 surge. As of July 6, the province has had 2,750 confirmed COVID-19 cases, of which 521 are still active.
However, to date, Eastern Samar still has no RT-PCR testing laboratory and still relies on the Eastern Visayas Regional COVID-19 Testing Center located around 190 kilometers away in Tacloban City. With the Center also catering to the needs of the five other provinces in the region, Evardone says the turnaround time is about 2.72 days. And in a pandemic such as this, time is of the essence. A lot can happen in a matter of hours while awaiting for the result of the test.
It is in this regard that Evardone has personally written to President Rodrigo Duterte asking him the possibility of providing for the province its own RT-PCR Testing Center. With all the hassles in availing the services of a testing center which is almost half-a-day away, maybe it wouldn’t be too much for Eastern Samar to ask for the establishment of its own testing center.
Let the mountains come to Allah, err, I mean, let the testing center come to Eastern Samar then.
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But wait. There’s more.
Eastern Samar Gov. Ben Evardone is also appealing to both Duterte and vaccine czar, Secretary Carlito Galvez, for an increase in its allocation of the COVID-19 vaccines.
In his letter to Galvez, Evardone stated that as of July 2, Eastern Samar was given 52,356 vaccines by the Department of Health, of which 44,898 have been used to vaccinate priority individuals belonging to the A1, A2, and A3 categories, which reveals that the province has the highest vaccine utilization in the region.
However, Evardone laments the figures show they are still far from reaching the targeted herd immunity as records show they have only so far inoculated 59 percent of their A1 category, 21 percent from the A2, and 33 from the A3 category.
With a population of 467,140 as of 2020, rollout for Eastern Samar’s vaccination stands at merely 10 percent of its populace.
In this regard, Evardone is asking for more allocation for COVID-19 vaccines.
With a greater supply of vaccines, Evardone said the province could inoculate more and maximize the use of all its vaccination centers.
“If granted this request, we are positive that the number of vaccinated individuals will increase and the operation of our vaccination centers will be maximized,” Evardone stated in his letter to Galvez.
Actually, the IATF should be sensitive to requests like these. A lot of areas have shown low turnout for vaccines as quite a significant number of people continue to shy away for their anti-virus shots having given in to the politicization of the vaccines, thanks but no thanks to the dengvaxia mess.
Now here comes a governor from a province whose people are more than willing to take their jabs, so why not re-channel vaccine allocations from areas with low turnouts. Aside from saving shots from expiring, as some media outlets have reported before, this could help provinces like Eastern Samar reach herd immunity.
Also, the success of provinces like Eastern Samar could probably help convince other people to take their jabs.
They are asking for their shots, then give it to them.