Gov't employs new strategies as PH vaccination rate plunges (Sabong News)
Author
Aaron Recuenco
Date
MARCH 07 2022
The vaccination rate across the country has significantly reduced starting last month, prompting the National Task Force Against Covid-19 to initiate measures to the encourage more Filipinos to get both the primary doses and the booster shots.
Sec. Carlito Galvez, Jr., NTF Against Covid-19 chief implementer and the concurrent vaccine czar, said that 18,240 235 doses administered in January this year, the figure reduced 8,795 790 last month, or more than 50 percent reduction.
“Since November (last year) were able to administer more than 27 million doses but this February, we were only able to vaccinate 8.7 million. So our output really decreased for February,” said Galvez during the Talk to the People with President Duterte on Monday night, March 7.
He said this is evident on the situation on the ground wherein most of the vaccination sites are almost empty.
“With the declaration of Alert Level 1 (which took effect on march 1), we have been experiencing saturation point in our vaccination centers, with only our pediatric sector that dominate our vaccination sites. Our vaccination centers are mostly empty,” said Galvez.
“So we will be needing other strategies to gather more vaccinees,” he added.
As a solution, Galvez said that they will be holding another three-day vaccination program wherein they are targeting to administer 1.8 million doses from March 10 to 12.
He said the also initiated other strategies in order to encourage more people to be vaccinated.
Among them are the coordination with the health sector to mobilize more volunteers and designation of private clinics as vaccination site in addition to pharmacies, coordinating with all government agencies to administer boosters to their employees, holding of vaccination in job fairs sites, massive house to house vaccination and providing incentives for those who have a booster shot.
Currently, there are 63.7 million Filipinos who are fully vaccinated while only 10.5 million have booster shots.
For 12-17 years old, Glazez said almost 8.6 million doses were administered while almost one million for 5-11 years old.
He said the government has currently 3.9 million doses in stocks but he added that there will more than six million doses which are expected to arrive this month.
