MANILA, Philippines — Local governments in Metro Manila have upped their game in a bid to entice more residents to get inoculated against COVID-19 using brands currently available in their vaccination sites.
Starting this week, vaccinees at the barangay covered court in Sucat, Muntinlupa City, can get a chance to win a 25-kilo sack of rice in a weekly raffle draw that will choose 20 winners. Vaccinees only need to fill up a raffle stub that will be given to them on the day of their shot.
Barangay Sucat chair Raffy Sevilla said the raffle was “the barangay’s gesture to thank the residents for their cooperation in the government’s vaccination program.”
The incentive to get more people vaccinated with available vaccine brands may be linked to last week’s feared superspreader event, when people crowded sites offering the US-made Pfizer vaccine, while leaving almost empty sites that were using the more readily available vaccine brand produced by China.
Health experts have linked vaccine hesitancy to brand preference.
House to house
The Muntinlupa local government also launched its house-to-house vaccination service for bedridden residents and individuals who are not capable of traveling to the city’s major vaccination sites.
The Muntinlupa city health office has recorded 84 individuals from the barangays of Sucat, Putatan, and Tunasan who received their COVID-19 jabs in their homes on Wednesday.
Manila, Taguig and Pasay cities earlier launched the same initiative for bedridden and senior patients. Metro Manila LGUs have also partnered with malls for these popular hangout places to be used as vaccination centers to accommodate more vaccine takers and decongest local vaccination sites.
Drive-thru
In Makati, drive-thru vaccination is now possible at the Circuit Makati grounds, and “not just for the rich, who have their own cars,” said Makati Mayor Abby Binay.
“We are hiring tricycles to pick up vaccinees and take them back to their homes. We are also arranging for ambulances [in]barangays to ferry their bedridden residents to the vaccination site,” she added.
In Taguig, a vaccination bus has been deployed to make COVID-19 jabs more accessible to its residents. Each bus can accommodate 200 vaccinees a day. The bus aims to provide “fast, safe, [and] accessible vaccination to more communities, even those [that are] hard to reach,” the city government said.
The vaccination bus made its first stop last week at the Pusawan covered court in Barangay Ususan. It will be stationed in the designated area for two to three days before it moves to another community.
Counseling and vaccination are conducted inside the bus while registration, screening, and post-vaccination monitoring are done outside.
Appointments may be done through the Taguig Registry for Access and Citizen Engagement (TRACE), or through the TRACE kiosks in every barangay.
Those who prefer to get their vaccines at these sites may use the “hop-on, hop-off’ or point-to-point bus service that will pick up vaccinees with confirmed schedules starting this week.
Vax-a-Million raffle
The idea of offering incentives has been gaining ground in the United States in an effort to convince the remaining 40 percent of its population to get their jabs, with Ohio’s Vax-a-Million getting the most mileage. Already, one woman has won the million-dollar prize in the weekly raffle conducted by the state that covers those who would come in for their jabs. Ohio is also raffling scholarships at its state colleges for those age 12 to 17.
Counties in other states have been offering other freebies to get more people to vaccination sites, from beer to doughnuts and a dinner with the governor of New Jersey.
According to a New York Times article, research has shown that incentives can be effective, but that with people in the United States sharply divided and adamantly clinging to their own position on vaccines, such gimmicks may actually be targeting a third group: those who are undecided and for whom vaccines are not a priority.