Photo from the City of San Fernando Information Office
LUCENA CITY — At least 90 percent or 10,648,206 qualified individuals in the Calabarzon region have been vaccinated twice against COVID-19, the Department of Health (DOH) said on Monday, Sept. 12.
However, only 2,990,438 or 51 percent of the target recipients have received their first booster dose as of Sept. 7.
Quezon province registered the lowest number of fully vaccinated, with 1,237,565 (77 percent) and 205,235 (26 percent) with a first booster shot, DOH-Calabarzon reported.
The agency said Batangas has 2,148,046 fully vaccinated and 570,980 with first booster shot; Cavite, 2,977,045 fully vaccinated, 949,698 first booster shot; Laguna has 2,272,001 fully vaccinated, 705,364 first booster shot; and Rizal, 2,013,192 fully vaccinated, 559,161 first booster shot.
Dr. Leda Hernandez, DOH-Calabarzon assistant regional director, urged the unvaccinated to have their additional doses for protection.
“It is safer to go to malls if grandpa and grandma are also vaccinated, so please get inoculated and help us convince everybody else to get vaccinated so we could maintain the wall of immunity against the virus,” she said in a statement.
Campaign
On Sept. 9, the DOH launched the “Pinaslakas” campaign in Lucena City.
The campaign aims to administer COVID-19 booster vaccines to at least 23 million people, or 50 percent of the eligible population during the first 100 days of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration.
Alarmed by the low vaccination rate, the Quezon provincial and local governments plan to impose stricter measures to increase COVID-19 booster vaccination among the target population.
Quezon Governor Angelina Tan, in her speech during the launch of “Pinaslakas,” said one of the measures they would impose is for shopping malls to not allow the entry of eligible persons “without presenting a booster card.”
She said the mall would require all visitors to show their vaccination cards.
Local health authorities say the low number of vaccinated residents was due to vaccine hesitancy.
Most residents who received their first dose failed to return for their second dose, probably out of fear or had side effects from their first dose.
The number of active COVID-19 cases in Quezon continues to drop amid the threat of declining vaccine recipients in the province.
As of Sept. 12, the active COVID-19 cases in the province dropped to 104 from 136 from Sept. 1, the Integrated Provincial Health Office reported.
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