Davao City fully vaccinates 1.05 million citizens against COVID-19

A patient receives a COVID-19 vaccine. (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP)

DAVAO CITY — The city government has fully vaccinated 1.05 million of its target population against COVID-19, only 18 percent short of its 1.2 million goal to achieve herd immunity.

Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio, however, expressed doubts that the city could reach the 1.29 million mark in the next two weeks, saying that the time was already too close to achieving the target.

“Every day we continue the vaccination,” she said. “We are supposed to be at 9,000 (individuals per day) so that we can achieve the 1.2 million goal even for the first doses before the end of the year,” she said.

She assured, however, that the city could easily reach the targeted number for herd immunity by the end of January next year.

About half of those fully-vaccinated in the city are essential workers, she said.

But Duterte-Carpio said people who did not want to get inoculated remained among the key challenges in the city’s vaccination drive.

“On the part of the city government, where 613 employees have yet to get vaccinated, our strategy is to provide counseling to these government employees (who continue to resist getting vaccinated),” the mayor said.

Earlier, she warned contractual employees who refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19 that their contracts would not be renewed next year.

So are vendors and traders renting government spaces including public markets who will not be given new contracts unless they get vaccinated, she said. “The good thing now is about 90 percent of public market renters have already been inoculated,” she added.

The holding of the second three-day Bayanihan Bakunahan initiative here contributed to the increase in the number of vaccinated people in the city.

Dr. Michelle Schlosser, spokesperson of the COVID-19 Task Force, earlier said the city would conduct another vaccination initiative so that the target number for its population to achieve herd immunity could be achieved.

Schlosser said some city councilors had also been holding dialogues to convince tribal leaders and people who still had lingering fears of the vaccines’ side effects to agree to get vaccinated.

She urged city residents to go to the vaccination centers because vaccines could protect them against death and severe COVID-19 as most of those who were sick and severely ill were unvaccinated.

Schlosser announced senior citizens would already get their booster shots during the three-day vaccination rollout that would start on December 15. Earlier, the city government already started administering booster shots to essential workers.