Commission on Population and Development (POPCOM) Undersecretary Antonio Perez III is pushing the concerned agencies to use its in-house demographic vulnerabilities tool (DVT) to help them in their coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccinations.
Specifically, Perez is recommending that the Department of Health (DOH) and local government units (LGUs) use the new DVT as the basis for vaccine rollouts according to geographic priorities.
In a statement Sunday May 23, POPCOM said it has also "strongly recommended the mobilization of composite teams in communities reporting high numbers of COVID-19-related cases and deaths, as well as unimpaired access to hospital care to LD ('low-populatio density') barangays registering mortalities".
The agency said it will soon distribute the new DVT information to its partner agencies DOH, Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) and the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).
The three, including POPCOM, will focus their efforts in regional offices, which in turn, will disseminate the material to LGUs for use in addressing the COVID-19 situation in their respective areas. It will be continuously updated to reflect barangays where the contagion continues to spread.
At the very least, tapping the DVT--which provides the latest figures from barangays regarding the effects of the pandemic--would theoretically allow for a more targeted rollout of COVID-19 jabs.
It was through the DVT that POPCOM was able to identify the 1,272 barangays nationwide that have the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the country. These villages averaged 137 cases over an eight-month period from September 2020 to April 15, 2021.
In comparison, 20,889 barangays averaged just 19 cases during the same period. Moreover, POPCOM noted that 15,252 communities remained “COVID-free”.
The agency has classified the 1,272 barangays as “high-population density (HD),” with populations ranging from 201 to 999 per hectare (ha) or well above the average of 200 persons per ha.
On the other hand, those with lower caseloads had populations below 200 per ha and were labeled as either LD or “medium-population density (MD)” communities. POPCOM’s classification covers 35,149, or 83 percent of all barangays in the country.
The community with the highest density in the Philippines, according to the agency, is Barangay 73 in Caloocan City, which has a population of 19,506 inside 1 ha.
POPCOM gathered that 63.4 percent of barangays nationwide reported COVID-19 infections during the eight-month period, with 11.5 percent of them recording deaths.
In terms of COVID-linked deaths, 3,348 LDs and MDs had 6,186 deaths or 1.84 per barangay. Inside HDs, there were 1,941 who perished—or 3.38 casualties per barangay —an average almost twice as many as in less-densely populated barangays.