Bacolod City – Provincial Administrator Rayfrando Diaz on Monday said that the provincial government of Negros Occidental is about to start releasing identification cards with QR codes to fully-vaccinated Negrenses.
Diaz said that they will start with vaccinees at Barangay Kapitolyo, composed of provincial government employees, with Gov. Eugenio Jose Lacson the first person to be issued with QR coded identification card.
Members of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan will follow in the issuance of the vaccine cards.
The COVID-19 Inter Agency Task Force gave local government units the discretion to require negative RT-PCR results, in addition to vaccination cards from travelers, and the swab test could be done before travel or upon arrival.
This, after the Department of Health announced that COVID-19 tests may still be required for fully vaccinated tourists upon entry to quarantine control points.
After Brgy. Kapitolyo, Diaz said they will require all local government units to provide them copies of their vaccination records, so that the names of fully vaccinated individuals will be uploaded to the provincial government data base for QR code availment.
He said the issued vaccination cards with QR code can be used for travel.
From July 1 to 8, the provincial government of Negros Occidental utilized 19,645 of the 21,388 of Sinovac vaccines in 30 out of 31 local government units, posting a utilization rate of 92 percent.
A total of 2,457 more Sinovac vaccines were also delivered yesterday by the Provincial Incident Management Team to 12 LGUs, as some of them requested for more vaccines.
Diaz congratulated top performers who continue to strive or improve their vaccination program.
To improve their vaccination rate, he said that they are giving more vaccines to LGUs, with big demands, stressing also that they cannot provide all LGUs with the same treatment, as it may lead to spoilage of vaccines if they fail to utilize the doses.
Lacson said the Department of Health assured them of vaccine deliveries every two weeks.
But he said he is not sure if Negros Occidental will share from the 3.2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines developed by the United States-based Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen, which is a single-shot dose.
(Dolly Yasa via The Daily Guardian (TDG), photo courtesy of TDG)