Police General Guillermo Lorenzo Eleazar, chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP), took the first dose of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine as the police organization starts the second round of the vaccination roll-out, this time, for personnel under the A4 category.
Eleazar, who was inoculated with the first dose of Sinovac, said his decision to take the first dose is part of the effort to encourage more policemen and even the public to get vaccination and refrain from being choosy.
Members of the PNP Command Group also got their first doses to convince all policemen of the safety of the vaccines and inspire them to get vaccinated.
"As the father of the organization, I want to show to our men that the best vaccines are those available. All of them are safe and effective because they were all approved by the Food and Drug Administration," said Eleazar.
He added that the vaccination of top officials of the PNP just now is a proof that they followed the rules on vaccination priority.
Based on he rules, medical frontliners should be the first to be vaccination, followed by senior citizens and those with comorbidity. A4 category includes essential frontliners and indigent Filipinos.
The vaccine confidence rate among PNP personnel is at 92.76%, according to Eleazar who believes that the vaccination of police officers would also encourage civilians to get inoculated against COVID-19.
So far, the PNP was allotted a total of 500 doses of COVID-19 vaccine. More doses will be supplied to the police force as more vaccines are expected to arrive in the country in the coming months.
“Our target is to vaccinate all our personnel against COVID-19. Since what we have now are limited, we encourage our personnel to take advantage of the free vaccines that would be offered to them by their respective local government units," said Eleazar.
Since the PNP started the vaccination on March 1 this year, almost 18,000 policemen were already vaccinated--all of them under the A1 to A3 categories.