Use tech to reduce queue time for COVID-19 vaccination, Duterte urges LGUs

MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte urged local government units (LGUs) on Monday to use technology and more advanced measures in vaccinating people against COVID-19 to reduce queue time and the risk of exposure to the disease.

“We need to administer the vaccines quickly because we do not [want] a vaccine site to become a spreader event […] Making them queue — that is, to make them line up — for an hour or longer exposes them,” Duterte said.

“Please use technology and advanced approaches to make sure the entire process is more effective,” Duterte said.  ‘Don’t make the people suffer and make them line up,” he added, speaking partly in Filipino.

He suggested that local officials, especially those at the barangay level, could give people cards with numbers and their assigned time. By doing that, the people would only need to go to the vaccination site a few minutes before their schedule.

Duterte pointed out that barangay officials would have a list of residents in their area, which they could use to countercheck those who would get vaccinated.

“Don’t let them wait long in the heat because that will also make them sick.  Just the same, the very thing you are trying to avoid will happen if you do not do that,” he said.

Due to crowding in vaccination sites, the government was forced to adopt a brand agnostic system – that is, those administering the vaccine would not reveal the brand to the recipient.

Long lines at vaccination sites have been a common sight, especially after the government released vaccines from American pharmaceutical company Pfizer, which has been a preferred brand among Filipinos.

According to a survey conducted by Social Weather Stations (SWS), 63% of 1,200 respondents preferred vaccines from the United States, like Pfizer and Moderna.

The same survey said that Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac is the top preferred brand, followed by Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson (another US brand).

Health experts warned that crowding at vaccination sites might be a superspreader event — which would defeat the purpose of immunizations.

The Philippines is banking heavily on COVID-19 vaccines to restart the economy and usher in herd immunity by the end of the year. However, the country is facing an uphill challenge as vaccine confidence among Filipinos remains low.

Last November 2020, SWS said that only 66% of Filipinos expressed willingness to be vaccinated against COVID-19, should vaccines become available. The number has gone down, with a more recent SWS saying in that only 32%  were willing to be vaccinated.