ANTIQUEÑOS GET THE JAB Residents of Hamtic town in Antique get vaccinated against COVID-19 at the University of Antique during the government’s three-day national vaccination drive last week. —PHOTO FROM DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH-WESTERN VISAYAS FACEBOOK PAGE
The National Task Force Against COVID-19 (NTF) is looking into the possibility of mandating all local governments to set up inoculation sites in each barangay under their jurisdiction.
“It’s good if there’s a directive from the [Department of Health] and [the Department of the Interior and Local Government] for each barangay to have at least a vaccination site that is near and accessible to their residents,” said Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., chief implementer of NTF.
Galvez cited General Santos City local government, which established vaccination sites in each of its 26 barangays, as “one of the best practices that should be replicated by local governments nationwide.”
‘Creative, innovative’
Interior Secretary Eduardo Año, who sits as the NTF vice chair, said the agency wanted to implement it to all 42,046 barangays in the country so that local governments can find “creative and innovative” measures to get their constituents inoculated.
Galvez also encouraged local chief executives and barangay chairs to open their vaccination sites to residents from neighboring areas in order to create a stronger line of defense against the Omicron variant.
46.5M fully vaxxed
As of Dec. 23, the government had already fully vaccinated 46.59 million, but was still short of its announced year-end target of fully inoculating 54 million Filipinos.
That’s why the government, aside from encouraging people to get their shots, will be continuing its Bayanihan Bakunahan mass vaccination program next year and even step it up to once every month.
“We need to ramp this up and we plan to do this every month,” said Secretary Vince Dizon, NTF deputy chief implementer.
“We have a lot of Janssen now, just one shot of this and you will be fully vaccinated,” Dizon said at the Laging Handa briefing, adding that the Philippines has received more than 12.5 million doses of the Janssen vaccine.
At the same time, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian urged local governments on Friday to start preparing for the COVID-19 vaccination of children aged 5 to 11.
The Food and Drug Administration has authorized the emergency use of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine on children as young as 5 years old. But the actual inoculation would have to wait until the government procures the Pfizer vaccines for this younger age group as the shots for them have a lower dosage and concentration and are different from the ones used on adults and teenagers.