CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – The city government is planning to give incentives to boost the Covid-19 vaccination coverage here.
In a Covid-19 briefing Monday, July 18, Dr. Ina Grace Chiu, Covid-19 vaccination coordinator, said that the City Health Office (CHO) and Mayor Rolando Uy have already tackled the proposal to provide rice, food packs, and other incentives for individuals who do not want to get inoculated.
“For children aged five- to 11-years-old, maybe we can go to the vaccination sites and provide vitamins. We could also provide vitamins for the senior citizens, like Vitamin B complex or something like that,” Chiu said in the vernacular.
“To prepare them for school, maybe we could also provide backpacks for those children who would want to be vaccinated,” she added.
President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. has ordered the National Vaccination Operations Center (NVOC) to ensure that all units of the Department of Health (DOH), local government units (LGUs), and other stakeholders reach the 90 percent coverage in the A2 (Senior Citizen) category.
They also have been ordered to reach 50 percent first booster vaccination coverage for the general population (12-years-old and above) and increase the vaccination coverage for children aged five- to 11-years-old.
This city has recorded 80.90 percent vaccination coverage in the A2 (Senior Citizen) category and seeks to achieve 90 percent coverage.
Chiu said they are focusing to achieve 50 percent coverage in first booster vaccination for the general population as they are only given 100 days to achieve the target.
“The 50 percent (target for first booster vaccination coverage) for the general population, we will focus on this because we need to vaccinate a huge population as we only tallied over 25 percent (for the said category),” she said.
She added that the CHO has set a schedule, depending on the request of the barangays, for the house-to-house booster vaccination.
They implemented a house-to-house vaccination strategy as they vaccinated more individuals through this, based on their assessment, compared to the vaccination on site.
Chiu stressed the importance of first booster vaccination as the first and second dose of vaccines are not enough to protect themselves against the virus.
As of July 15, this city has 555,972 fully vaccinated individuals, equivalent to 91.90 percent coverage.
However, only 147,555 individuals have received booster shots, for 28.16 percent booster vaccination coverage.
This city already has 26,245 fully vaccinated children five- to 11-years-old, equivalent to 28.57 percent coverage. More than 10,000 children have yet to receive their second dose.
Health authorities here asked the public to cooperate by getting vaccinated.