THE national government urged local government units (LGUs) nationwide to be “creative and flexible” to help scale up vaccination rollouts in their respective areas now that bigger vaccine shipments are arriving in the country.
“We look forward to seeing each and every LGU in the country hitting their daily jab targets in the days ahead, as we collectively work towards reaching and sustaining the 1.5 million jab rate that we hope to achieve within this quarter,” said National Task Force Against COVID-19 (NTF) chief implementer and vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez, Jr.
He shared that the vaccine supplies stored in national warehouses currently stand at around eight million doses, while those deployed and stored in regional warehouses across the country have reached 30 million doses.
These vaccines, he said, are ready for distribution to various implementing units in the regions.
The NTF has also directed LGUs to conduct house-to-house vaccinations in their localities to ramp up their daily vaccination rates.
“We look forward to in the next few days, by November, we will be able to reduce our storage inventory to at least 20 million doses,” Galvez said.
The latest shipment of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines will be equally distributed to all regions, and will be allocated for the vaccination of the pediatric sector or those aged 12 to 17 years old.
Meanwhile, the AstraZeneca jabs donated by Japan have been allocated as booster shots for healthcare workers.
The government aims to complete the vaccination of more than 12.7 million individuals under the 12 to 17 years age group by the end of the year.
Galvez said 157 hospital and non-hospital based vaccination sites will be used for the inoculation of this age group, adding the nationwide rollout for the pediatric vaccination will kick off on November 3.
He said the administration of booster shots to healthcare workers may begin by mid-November pending the amendment of the Emergency Use Authorization of the vaccines, as well as the recommendation from the World Health Organization.