The first shot of any coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine that would be allocated for the Philippine National Police (PNP) under the A4 category will be administered to Police General Guillermo Lorenzo T. Eleazar, the top official said on Thursday, June 10.
The PNP is yet to receive its allocation of the vaccines but Eleazar said they are ready for the second wave of the roll-out once the vaccine allocation for the PNP personnel arrives.
“We will not choose the brand that would be administered to us. We subscribe to the findings of health experts that all vaccine brands are safe and effective so we will take advantage of this free vaccination regardless of the brand,” said Eleazar.
Eleazar repeatedly warned policemen before not to skip the government's priority list, saying he himself would wait for the time when the vaccination for A4 category starts.
He said he will be joined by the members of the Command Group in receiving the first dose as part of the information campaign for the more than 220,000 personnel of the PNP that the vaccination is a responsibility of every citizen and that all the vaccines brand are safe.
The move, according to him, is to convince the remaining PNP personnel who remain undecided on whether or not they would be vaccinated.
As of June 10, a total of 92.23 % of PNP personnel have expressed willingness to be vaccinated.
Eleazar explained that aggressive information dissemination has been proven effective in the PNP in convincing PNP personnel to be inoculated.
When hew as still the commander of the PNP’s Administrative Support on COVID-19 Task Force (ASCOTF), Eleazar said the first survey he initiated revealed that only around 51 percent of PNP personnel wanted to be vaccinated in February this year.
As the PNP-ASCOTF started posting fact sheets and videos from the Department of Health about the benefits of being vaccinated against the COVID-19 using the PNP-COVID Data (CODA) which is accessible to all PNP personnel, the figure continuously increased on a daily basis.
“We are still waiting for the vaccine allocation but I have already instructed all PNP personnel to take advantage of the COVID vaccines that would be offered to them by their respective LGUs (Local Government Units). This arrangement was already approved by our DILG Secretary Eduardo M Año,” said Eleazar.
Based on the latest PNP data, a total 16,646 policemen have already been vaccinated, a total of 11,167 of them have already completed the vaccination while the rest are just waiting for the schedule of their second dose.