Senator Joel Villanueva on Tuesday, June 8, appealed to the government to closely monitor the vaccination of economic and government frontliners under the A4 category.
Villanueva, chairman of the Senate labor committee, said authorities should "keep a separate scoresheet" for the vaccines administered to the A4 group, as they are "key to our economic recovery."
“We need to disaggregate the numbers and monitor effectively to give us a clearer picture as to where we are in our vaccination drive," he explained in his statement.
“Hindi po ba uso ang term na ‘granular’ ngayon? I-apply po natin iyan sa mga manggagawa sa A4 priority list dahil sila ang bumubuhay sa nakalugmok nating ekonomiya (Isn't the term 'granular' being used these days? Let us apply this to workers in the a4 priority list because they are the ones who will help our struggling economy)," he further said.
“The data on the A4 priority who have been vaccinated must be highlighted because it is an important indicator,” he pointed out.
Villanueva noted that an estimated 35.5 million essential frontline workers. As of June 6, 4,559 people belonging to the A4 classification have been fully vaccinated.
“This is the running count that must be highlighted. Kung meron po tayong scoreboard, dapat headline numbers ‘yang sa A4 (If we have a scoreboard, the A4 numbers should be put in the headline)," Villanueva said.
Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. recently said that the lack of vaccines is slowing down the country's immunization program, although he expressed optimism that this will pick up once vaccine deliveries expected for this month arrive.
The government's task force reported that a total of 5,965,651 doses of vaccines have been administered in the country as of June 6, with 1,520,788 people fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Villanueva has been pushing for the inoculation of essential workers to boost the reopening of economy and help in the country's recovery from the pandemic.
On Monday, June 7, the government has officially started rolling out the COVID-19 vaccines to workers under the A4 group.