The San Juan City local government, together with officials from Rockwell Land, led the ceremonial lighting of Santolan Town Plaza's Christmas tree and decorations to usher in Christmas festivities despite the prevailing Covid-19 pandemic.

San Juan City Mayor Francis Zamora and Rockwell Vice President Beaver Lopez spearheaded the lighting ceremony of the 10-meter tall Christmas tree adorned with 86 balls and 30,000 Christmas lights at 2,100 meters or 2.1 kilometers long.

Santolan Town Plaza, which was opened in 2017 and which houses a supermarket, cinemas, office spaces, restaurants, and other service establishments, was also decorated with a total of 3,756 meters or over 3.75 kilometers of LED lights.

“I thank Rockwell for its support to the City of San Juan during one of our darkest moments during the pandemic, with our city having reported the first local transmission of COVID-19 in the country. Your contribution has enabled us to fight the pandemic head on, especially with our vaccination program - number 1 in fully vaccinating our target population, number 1 in administering booster shots, and number 1 in administering pediatric vaccination,” Zamora said.

Rockwell Land had previously partnered with the city government in setting up a Covid-19 satellite vaccination center for residents and visitors.

In August, Zamora underscored the importance of getting vaccinated and boosted against the virus.

“Well, we can see still that even fully vaccinated individuals get Covid, but what we should look at really is the severity of their condition. Let’s not focus just on the number of cases but let’s look at how many are severe, how many are critical, how many are mild to asymptomatic,” Zamora noted.

“Our hospital utilization rate is also low, where majority of Covid-19 patients in our hospitals are actually residents from other cities and provinces,” he added.

“We have gone to the extent of going house-to-house for our booster vaccination. In fact, I have acted as an ambassador for the vaccination program. I believe as mayor, it is my duty to push for a high vaccination rate. This is something we have achieved. We remain to be number one in terms of number of fully vaccinated individuals in relation to our target population and also in the administration of the first booster,” the mayor explained.

Aside from house-to-house vaccination, the city government had also set up vaccination sites in malls and other high volume commercial establishments to encourage people to get vaccinated and boosted.