The Department of Health (DOH) on Monday appealed to the local government units (LGUs) to prioritize the most vulnerable sectors after some cities were forced to suspend their vaccination activities due to lack of vaccine supply in the country.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said that there were LGUs who have suspended their scheduled vaccination as they experienced shortage in vaccine supply.
“[Vaccine] Supply pa din ang ating issue…hindi naman ‘yan kontrolado ng ating gobyerno at di rin kontrolado ng LGUs [Vaccine supply is still the issue…that is something that is out of control of the government and the LGUs],” Vergeire said.
With this, Vergeire said that the A1 (health-care workers), A2 (senior citizens)and A3 (persons with comorbidity), should be prioritized to protect our population.”
On Sunday, Makati City has suspended their vaccination for the first dose of A4 category scheduled on July 5. The city of Muntinlupa also was not able to receive their vaccine supply.
Atty. Don Camiña, Makati City spokesman, said that the vaccination for the first dose remains suspended today.
“Wala tayong for first dose tomorrow ( Tuesday, July 6). Konti lang dumating from national. Enough lang for two weeks na 2nd dose [We still don’t have supply for our first dose tomorrow. We only received few doses from the national government. Only enough for two weeks for the 2nd dose],” Camiña said.
Last week, the Taguig city government closed all their vaccination hubs in Taguig City, except for Vista Mall, which was opened for the second dose of AstraZeneca only.
Meanwhile, Vergeire assured that more supply will arrive second week of this month.
Vaccine rollout
The Department of Health (DOH) said that as of July 4, 2021, a total of 11,708,029 doses have already been administered. 8,839,124 have received their first dose, while 2,868,905 have already completed the required 2 doses.
The total doses administered in the 18th week of the national vaccination reached a record high of 1,778,989 doses.
“The government is urging eligible populations belonging to priority groups A1 to A5 to register with their local government units, get vaccinated, and complete the required number of doses as scheduled,” DOH added.
Regardless of vaccination status, the DOH reiterated, “everyone is urged to continue practicing the minimum public health standards as you may still get infected with Covid-19 and infect other people.”
Covid cases
The DOH logged 5,392 additional cases on Monday, bringing the total number of infections in the country to 1,441,746.
There were also 6,477 recoveries and 43 deaths.
Of the total number of cases, 3.6 percent (51,594) are active, 94.7 percent (1,364,960) have recovered, 1.75 percent (25,192) had died.
Fifteen duplicates were removed from the total case count. Of these, 9 are recoveries.
Moreover, 20 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.
All laboratories were operational on July 3, 2021 but 10 were not able to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System.
Based on data in the last 14 days, the 10 non-reporting labs contribute, on average, 0.70 percent of samples tested and 1.40 percent of positive individuals.