MANILA: The Department of Health (DOH) and the National Task Force Against Covid-19 (NTF) assured on Saturday that the pace of vaccination for health care workers (HCWs) would rise exponentially once the bulk of the government-procured doses, as well as those from the Covax Facility, arrive by the middle of the year.
The current pace will pick up once the full-scale implementation of the National Covid-19 Vaccination Programme has been initiated.
“It is not logical to compute performance evaluation from the start of the mini-rollout. We will be able to get our benchmark vaccination rate when we start our massive community rollout by May and June,” NTF chief implementer and vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez said in a statement.
As of the latest count, almost 90 percent of available doses have been distributed to even as far as Batanes and Tawi-Tawi.
“From the northernmost to the southernmost island provinces. It is a testament that our distribution channels are ready should the vaccines arrive,” Galvez said.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said it is expected that the vaccination of HCWs would be steadily paced to ensure that hospitals are fully operational and their staff sufficient at any given time.
“In anticipation of local and systemic reactions that can occur as a result of vaccination and may render some vaccinees unable to report to work, hospitals needed to spread out the vaccination of their staff. They can’t be vaccinated all at the same time,” he said in a separate statement.
Duque and Galvez said the initial rollout is only the preparatory phase of the full-scale vaccination programme.
“We are only in the second week of our rollout, but the experience we are gaining from this phase will help us once (the) supply of vaccines becomes steady,” Galvez said.
“While herd immunity is the goal of every country, including ours, our short-term goal with the limited vaccine supply is to reduce mortality and protect those who are at most risk,” Duque said. “We are confident that we will be vaccinating much more once our vaccines arrive, but while we wait for our turn to get vaccinated, I want to emphasise that we cannot let our guards down. Vaccination is only one of our strategies to beat this virus, but our adherence to minimum public health standards is still the best.”
Of the 5,000 reported cases Saturday, 4,936 (99 percent) occurred within the recent 14 days (February 28 to March 13, 2021).
The top regions with cases in the recent two weeks were National Capital Region (2,342 or 47 percent), Region 4-A (767 or 16 percent) and Region 7 (478 or 10 percent).
