The national government will be conducting special vaccination days at the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) amid what officials described as concerning low vaccination rate among the local residents.
Usec. Jonathan Malaya, spokesman of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), said the planned special vaccination days for BARMM were already given a go signal by the National Task Force Against COVID-19 headed by Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr.
"BARMM is a special area that we are focusing on. It where the big challenge really is because only 25 percent of the population there are fully vaccinated," said Malaya in a press briefing at Camp Crame in Quezon City.
"So we are going to have special vaccination days in BARMM. Every province in the region will be the focus of intensive government intervention through the NTF to ensure that we would meet our target just like the rest of the country," he added.
Based on the latest data more or less 67 million Filipinos have already been fully vaccinated but the figure is still short of the target of inoculating 75 percent of the population for herd immunity. More or less 12 million Filipinos, on the other hand, got their booster shots.
Last month, Galvez reported to President Duterte that there have been low turnout in vaccination sites starting February this year. Around 22 million doses of Covis-19 vaccines are set to expire in July this year. This prompted Duterte to order a house-to-house vaccination.
DILG Sec. Eduardo Año said this is the reason why they have been very strict in monitoring the campaign sorties in BARMM, saying this could lead to upsurge of cases.
Aside from BARMM, other regions with low vaccination rate are Central Mindanao and Central Visayas.