The Department of Health (DOH) is now considering redeploying some of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine doses originally allocated for Metro Manila to other regions tagged as "high risk."
"It's good that NCR is now at low risk classification based on the daily attack rate and number of new cases per day. They have started to go down, which means the case transmission is slowing down," Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said in a press briefing in Taguig City, Thursday, June 24.
"Therefore, it will give us more comfort to redeploy the vaccines, some of which have been originally allocated for NCR," he added.
Duque revealed that they have increased allocation to Regions 6 (Western Visayas) , 8 (Eastern Visayas), 9 (Zamboanga Peninsula), 10 (Northern Mindanao), 11 (Davao), 12 (Soccsksargen), Caraga and Bangsamora Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
"We have to be agile. We have to be able to adjust given the situation. We have to be sensitive to areas experiencing a spike or a surge," he said.
Meanwhile, the DOH said the possibility of lowering the quarantine status in Metro Manila is already being studied.
"That possibility is being studied by the DOH along with our sub-technical working group on data analytics. We will look into the possibility of staying under GCQ or possibly lowering it already,"DOH - Epidemiology Bureau (EB) Director Dr Alethea de Guzman said in a radio interview.
"The status of healthcare utilization is also one of the basis. We want to see if there are still hospitals and ICU beds that are still getting overwhelmed," she added.
The NCR is under GCQ until June 30.