Gov’t eyes new definition of ‘full vaccination’

Senior citizens in Parañaque City are inoculated with the CoronaVac vaccine at a shopping mall near Manila Bay. (File photo by RICHARD A. REYES / Philippine Daily Inquirer)

MANILA, Philippines — The government is considering a redefinition of full vaccination to include the administration of a third dose or booster shot of the COVID-19 vaccine.

“Today, when we say fully vaccinated, it means you have been inoculated with the primary doses. We are looking into the possibility of redefining it so that when we say fully vaccinated, it should include the booster shot, or you should have been inoculated thrice,” Interior Undersecretary for Operations Epimaco Densing III said at Monday’s Laging Handa briefing.

He said one way for the new policy to be implemented was to set an expiration date on vaccination cards.

“There’s this possibility that if you haven’t got your booster [shot] after six months [since your inoculation with the primary shots], your vaccination card will be automatically expired,” Densing said.

Vaccination sites, Densing said, will remain open to accept people who have not yet been administered either the primary or booster doses.

Since local officials may be preoccupied with the election campaign, the Department of the Interior and Local Government is now coordinating with local health authorities to ensure the continuation of mass vaccination, he said.

The government may introduce a marketing campaign alongside the inoculation drive to convince more Filipinos to get vaccinated, Densing added.

According to him, only around 12 million, mostly from Metro Manila, have availed themselves of booster shots, with the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao having the lowest vaccination coverage in the country.

Virus case update

There were fewer new COVID-19 cases detected last week compared with the previous week, although this decline in new cases appears to have slowed down.

The Department of Health (DOH) reported in its weekly bulletin 2,679 new cases from March 28 to April 3, fewer by 47 cases than the 2,726 the previous week.

Last week’s daily average of 382 new cases was 2 percent lower than the previous week’s average of 389.

There were also fewer COVID-19 deaths reported last week, 329, compared with 752 the previous week.

The DOH confirmed 116 more deaths in March, 81 in February, 50 in January. The rest were recorded between March and December last year.

This pushed the death toll to 59,344 out of the 3.6 million coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic.

—WITH A REPORT FROM DONA Z. PAZZIBUGAN

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