Gov’t urged to hold another massive vax drive amid rising COVID cases

FILE PHOTO: A health worker prepares a dose of the BioNTech Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine during a vaccination for seafarers at a stadium in Manila on July 15, 2021. (Photo by Ted ALJIBE / AFP)

MANILA, Philippines — A lawmaker from Bulacan on Wednesday called on the government to hold another massive vaccination campaign amid increasing COVID-19 cases accross the country.

“We need to have another massive vaccination drive like what we had last year when we allotted three days to ramp up inoculating at least 9 million people all over the country,” Rep. Florida Robes of the lone district of San Jose del Monte City said in a statement.

“The Filipino people should be given sufficient access to life-saving vaccines to give them better protection against Covid-19, especially the highly transmissible Omicron variant,” she added.

The national government earlier held two three-day national vaccination campaigns in November and December 2021.

The Philippines has administered around 115 million COVID-19 vaccine doses with 58 million receiving the first dose and more than 53 million fully vaccinated as of January 11, according to the vaccination dashboard on the Department of Health’s website.

Over 3.8 million had received booster shots, it also showed.

Robes noted that with the figure, some 47.9 percent of Filipinos have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, which she said is still a long way to go before the country achieves so-called herd immunity that requires complete inoculation of 70 percent of its qualified population.

READ: PH eyes to vaccinate 90 million Filipinos before end of June 2022 – Galvez

“On the average, only more than 300,000 doses are being administered daily so we need to again ramp up vaccination in order to achieve herd immunity much earlier,” she said.

In the city of San Jose del Monte, the lawmaker said 375,278 people or 82.89 percent of its target population were already fully vaccinated as of January 11.

Some 38,178 people in the city, meanwhile, now received their booster shot, she added.

“We have a high vaccination rate in San Jose Del Monte because of the massive vaccination drive we do every single day…Only around 30,000 of our residents are unvaccinated and we are working hard to reach them so that all of us will be protected,” Robes said.

On Wednesday, the city confirmed 157 additional COVID-19 cases, raising its total active infections to 1,375.

Nationwide, the Department of Health reported Wednesday the infection of 32,246 more people in the country. It also reported that current active COVID-19 cases reached 208,164 as of January 12.

KGA