To further ramp up the vaccination program against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), local chief executives (LCEs) were challenged by the country’s national task force on pandemic response to think of innovative ways to encourage more people to get the life-saving jab.
Dr. Ted Herbosa, special adviser of the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19, said Saturday, Oct. 30, that governors, mayors, and local leaders in the barangay level can imitate what the mayors in the National Capital Region (NCR) did to decrease vaccine hesitancy among the public.
Among these are the implementation of round-the-clock or 24/7 vaccination programs and the giving of raffle prizes to those who would get themselves inoculated.
“Make it everyday or even 24 hours like what they did to NCR. We had ‘Bakuna Nights’ and other creative ideas. They have gifts for the people to get vaccinated and stuff like that. The local government units and local chief executives are emboldened to actually vaccinate more,” said Herbosa during the arrival of an additional 1,546,200 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine at NAIA Terminal 3 around 4:15 p.m.
He said innovative programs by the LGUs would help the national government reach its target of administering one million to 1.5 million doses per day starting November.
“They have to be creative to reach that target and convince those that are unconvinced to get vaccinated,” he added.
On the part of the national government, the National Vaccination Operations Center (NVOC) has been pushing for the opening of additional vaccination centers and the hiring of more vaccinators to speed up the inoculation program.
“We still have a lot of vaccine hesitancy in some sectors. We now have the vaccines so we need to get them to the vaccination sites,” Herbosa noted.
The NTF adviser stressed that the country has no longer problems on the supply of vaccine.
In fact, the recent delivery of AstraZeneca increased the vaccine supply to 104,113,480 doses. These vaccines came from the donations of other countries through the COVAX facility.
Herbosa admitted that the challenge now lies on how the government could transport the vaccines to the LGUs the soonest time possible so these can be administered to the people.
“This has increased our stockpile but the most important thing is to really give the vaccines to the Filipinos so we have to increase our vaccine administration. As what has said, it’s not the vaccines that save lives, it’s the vaccination,” he stated.