House Speaker Lord Allan Velasco on Monday urged the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) to prioritize the National Capital Region (NCR) Plus and other urban centers with high concentration of coronavirus cases in the Covid-19 vaccine rollout.
Velasco said the government should focus its Covid-19 vaccine rollout in NCR and its nearby provinces, but only after all medical frontliners in the country are fully inoculated against the deadly disease.
āAs we await large supplies of vaccines to come in, we urge the IATF to prioritize NCR Plus and other urban centers in our vaccine rollout so we can quell the surge in new infections in those areas,ā Velasco said.
āBut first and foremost, let us vaccinate all 1.7 million health-care workers all over the country to make sure they are protected against Covid-19,ā he added.
Aside from the NCR Plus, Velasco said the national government should also give priority vaccine allocation to Mega Cebu, Davao, Cagayan de Oro and other regional centers across the country.
NCR Plus is composed of the cities and municipality in Metro Manila, and the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal, areas that have been experiencing a surge in Covid-19 cases largely attributed to fast-spreading coronavirus variants.
Echoing health experts, Velasco said the best defense against the āsuperspreader variantsā would be to inundate these areas with vaccines.
The Philippines is expected to be supplied with an estimated 10 million doses by June this year, ramping up to 15 million to 20 million doses to be delivered by August, barring any major hitches.
The country is currently struggling with measly supplies as developed nations have stockpiled most of the worldās reserve of vaccines against Covid-19.
The Department of Health has tallied over a million verified cases of Covid-19 with a daily average of 8,000 new cases since March.
According to Velasco, it would be prudent at this juncture to concentrate inoculation efforts toward areas where the health systems are vulnerable.
āWin the battleā
Cavite Rep. Elpidio Barzaga Jr., chairman of the House committee on natural resources, for his part, strongly urged the DOH and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) and various groups of medical practitioners to use government television channels and radio stations to step up their information campaign and boost the peopleās confidence on the Covid-19 vaccination program.
He said the government should strengthen the concerted effort to improve peopleās vaccine confidence.
āOn an individual level, this is the only way to attain herd immunity to beat the pandemic and gradually restore to normalcy,ā he said.
The administration lawmaker, who is the president of the National Unity Party (NUP) in the Lower House, lamented that while many are still hesitant to be vaccinated even if itās meant to protect an individual from getting Covid-19.
āLittle do we realize that getting vaccinated protects us and the people around us, particularly people who are at an increased risk for severe illness from Covid-19,ā Barzaga stated. āWe need to increase vaccine confidence and improve the publicās understanding of how it can help control the spread of Covid-19 in their families and communities.ā
Barzaga said holding regular webinars to be aired live on government television and radio stations will help address the vaccine confidence gap, especially when it involves a lot of people or organizations āworking together in a determined way.āā