73,000 Manila residents pre-register for COVID-19 vaccine
Over 73,000 residents of the City of Manila have pre-registered to reserve their slots for the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) vaccine as of Tuesday.
The Manila city government launched manilacovid19vaccine.com on December 31, 2020, making it the first local government unit in the country to open such a platform.
Manila Mayor Francisco "Isko Moreno" Domagoso earlier said that they want to make the vaccination process voluntary. Vaccines will also be administered for free, regardless if they are residents of the city or not.
Those who pre-registered will be included in the priority list for the city government's vaccination program, below frontline health workers, senior citizens and other vulnerable sectors, and public school teachers.
The city government has secured an initial supply of 800,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses through an agreement with British-Swedish biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. The vaccines, that are seen to arrive in a few months, can inoculate around 400,000 people.
Domagoso has expressed intent to purchase more vaccines from other multinational biopharmaceutical companies, provided that they are given approval for use and distribution by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
In 2020, the Manila city government earmarked a P250 million budget for the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines. The Manila mayor said they can increase the budget to up to P1 billion should they need to buy more vaccines.
In preparation for the arrival of the vaccines in the country, the city government has been procuring equipment, conducting training among its personnel, and setting up facilities.
The local government bought several refrigerator units that can store vaccines from different companies. These include five HYC-390 refrigerators, that can store AstraZeneca and/or Sinovac vials; two -25°C biomedical freezers, and two -30°C biomedical freezers, that can store Janssen and/or Moderna vaccine vials; and three -86°C ULT freezers, that can store Pfizer vaccine vials.
At least 50 transport coolers, that will be used for the deployment of the vaccines, are also on the way.
These new equipment will be stored in the soon-to-be-launched Manila COVID-19 Vaccine Storage Facility that is being built in Sta. Ana Hospital.
On Tuesday, the government also began its COVID-19 vaccination simulation to train its health workers in handling the vaccine and to identify possible problems that may arise during the vaccination program.