San Jose del Monte City Rep. Florida “Rida” P. Robes on Wednesday, Jan. 12 said the full cooperation of local government units in ensuring the successful implementation of vaccination drives and information campaigns could contribute to the swift achievement of herd immunity in the country.
Robes cited as an example San Jose Del Monte City that has achieved 82 percent vaccination rate of its target population.
Robes, chairperson of the House Committee on People's Participation, said the Bulacan city carried out a a well-executed vaccination and information campaign that resulted in the high accomplishment rate.
However, Robes has asked the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Disease to conduct another round of jabs to help SJDM control the exponential increase in COVID-19 cases.
“We need to have another massive vaccination drive like what we had last year when we allotted three days to ramp up inoculating at least nine million people all over the country. The Filipino people should be given sufficient access to life-saving vaccines to give them better protection against Covid-19, especially the highly transmissible Omicron variant,” said Robes, chairperson of the House Committee on People’s Participation.
As of Tuesday, Jan. 11, the government already administered some 115 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines. Of this number, 58 have received the first dose while 53 million are fully vaccinated.
At least 3.8 million individuals had received booster shots.
Robes said with the figure, some 47.9 percent of Filipinos have been fully vaccinated which is still a long way to go before the country can achieve the 70 percent herd immunity.
“On the average only more than 300,000 doses are being administered daily so we need to again ramp up vaccination in order to achieve herd immunity much earlier,” Robes noted.
Robes said as of January 11, San Jose Del Monte City was able to vaccinate some 375,278 or 82.89 percent of its target population while 424,680 or 93.80 percent already received their first dose. More than 38,178 received their booster shot.
“We have a high vaccination rate in San Jose Del Monte because of the massive vaccination drive we do every single day. Mayor Arthur Robes has implemented ways to push up vaccination,” the lady solon stated.
She said: “We have night vaccination for workers and we go house to house to reach those who are unable to travel our vaccination sites.” “Because of this, we are able to achieve 82.89 percent vaccination. Only around 30,000 of our residents are unvaccinated and we are working hard to reach them so that all of us will be protected,” Robes disclosed.
On January 12, 2022, San Jose Del Monte City was able to confirm 157 new cases, raising the total active cases in the city to 1,375.