At least 100 medical frontliners from the Philippine National Police (PNP) are the first batch of those who will be inoculated as the government started on Monday, March 1, the vaccine rollout using the Sinovac doses that were donated by the Chinese government.
PNP chief Gen. Debold Sinas said the 100 personnel from the PNP Health Service are among the 800 PNP members who were included in the priority list based on the vaccine allocation by the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of the Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-MEID).
"The Philippine National Police is grateful to be included in the priority list. We trust that this vaccine roll-out in the coming weeks and months will be the ultimate game-changer in our whole-of-nation response to the national health crisis," said Sinas in a statement.
More than 600,000 doses of Sinovac arrived in the country on Sunday, Feb. 28 but even those in the priority list are apprehensive of taking the vaccine due to issues of efficacy and side effects that were reported about the China-made vaccines in the past.
PNP spokesman Brig. Gen. Ildebrandi Usana said those who will be vaccinated on Monday will be led by PNP Health Service Director Brig. Gen. Luisito Magnaye in an attempt by the PNP to encourage medical frontliners in the PNP to be vaccinated.
Three weeks ago, the PNP conducted a survey of who among its more than 219,000 personnel wanted to be vaccinated. In the first survey, only 51 percent said that they want to avail of the government's free vaccine but the figure rose to more than 70 percent by the end of February due to the massive information drive by the PNP among its personnel.