With everything already in place for Valenzuela’s vaccination rollout, Mayor Rex Gatchalian said the city government's aim now is to persuade more residents to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
In an interview with ANC Philippines on Wednesday, Gatchalian said there are still a lot of residents who have reservations about getting vaccinated.
“We’re getting a lot of comments that they want to wait or they want others to go ahead. Basically, there are ’nos with reservation.’ So the plan now is to answer those reservations with our media campaign or our communications plan or marketing campaign,” Gatchalian said.
“We want to make sure that this early we can convert the ‘nos with reservations’ to ‘yes in register’,” he added.
So far, Gatchalian said 15,000 Valenzuela residents have registered to be vaccinated, which the mayor said is still a “long way to go” from the city’s 320,000 target, but said the city still “has a lot of time” to achieve its goal.
Gatchalian said the city aims to finish its vaccination program in one quarter.
The COVID-19 vaccines purchased by the city is expected to arrive at the second quarter of the year anytime from July to December, according to the mayor.