The World Health Organization (WHO) urged the local government units (LGUs) to ramp up its COVID-19 vaccination efforts for vulnerable individuals, particularly senior citizens to protect them against the severe form of the viral illness.

WHO Acting Country Representative Dr. Rajendra Yadav said about 2.5 million senior citizens in the Philippines “remain unvaccinated.”

"They not even received a single dose. So vaccinating older people is one of the most impactful ways to save lives during this pandemic,” he said in a public briefing last Friday, Feb. 11.

Yadav reiterated that senior citizens are at high risk for developing severe illness, getting hospitalized, and dying from COVID-19.

“With fewer restrictions and high mobility happening now, we could be putting our unvaccinated senior citizens at risk of hospitalization and death,” he said.

“We appeal to the governors and mayors to do everything in their power to vaccinate our priority groups as soon as possible. We need to vaccinate the high priority groups before another variant causes another surge,” he added.

Yadav said that “many provinces have very high number of senior citizens without a single dose of COVID 19 vaccines– some of them are like Cebu, Negros Occidental, Batangas, Cavite, Bulacan.”

“So I appeal to these places, the authorities of these places especially the governors and mayors to vaccinate the elderly and then we can already be starting moving into the direction of living with COVID in an endemic form,” he said.

Despite this, the WHO official lauded the Philippines for fully vaccinating more than 60 million people since it stated its COVID-19 vaccination program last March 2021.

“We congratulate the Philippine government for vaccinating over 60 million people so far, at least 70 percent of the eligible population, over 12 years old. So that is really good,” he said.

Meanwhile, he also encouraged parents of children aged five to 11 years old to get them vaccinated.

“WHO encourages children to be vaccinated, these vaccines are very safe, we should not create unnecessarily panic among parents by spreading misinformation. We have not seen that these vaccines are causing any more side effects than other vaccines,” he said.

“These are very safe vaccines and effective. If you don’t vaccinate our children, they are also likely to develop severe COVID and die especially if they have comorbidities. So I encourage all parents to go out and get vaccinated for their children,” he added.