A TOP Palace official hinted at the need for the local government units (LGUs) to submit list of local folks falling under the A4 cluster of the priority sectors for vaccination.
Interviewed over radio, Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles said that more vaccine doses are expected to arrive in the next few months, and that coming up with their master list would make the vaccination roll out faster and systematic.
Among those that the LGUs would have to include under the A4 cluster are people in the following brackets:
- Commuter transport (land, air, and sea), including logistics
- Public and private wet and dry market vendors
- Frontline workers in groceries, supermarkets, delivery services
- Workers in manufacturing for food, beverage, medical and pharmaceutical products
- Frontline workers in food retail, including food service delivery
- Frontline workers in private and government financial services
- Frontline workers in hotels and accommodation establishments
- Priests, rabbis, imams, and other religious leaders
- Security guards/ personnel assigned in offices, agencies, and organizations identified in the list of priority industries/sectors
- Frontline workers in private and government news media
- Customer-facing personnel of telecoms, cable and internet service providers, electricity distribution, and water distribution utilities
- Frontline personnel in basic education and higher education institutions and agencies
- Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), including those scheduled for deployment within two months
- Frontline workers in law/justice, security, and social protection sectors
- Frontline government workers engaged in the operations of government transport system, quarantine inspection
- Worker safety inspection and other COVID-19 response activities
- Frontline government workers in charge of tax collection, assessment of businesses for incentives, election, national ID, data collection personnel
“We are expecting more and more doses to come in. Ngayong May with more doses compared to volume we expect for April, and then by June mas marami ‘yan sa May. The expected July volume is higher than June’s,” Nograles said.
“So in preparation ng midyear surge ng vaccines natin, at the very least, lahat ng mga ito ima-master list na natin para kami sa national, sa Department of Health, medyo mapoprogram ang allocation per LGU para hindi tayo mabigla,” he added.
Allocation of vaccines, he added, will be based on the master list given by the LGUs even as he assured the public that vaccine supply will be available in the Philippines, with the help of Asian countries amid shortage of supply from Western manufacturers.
“Kung mahirapan tayo sa western front, mayroon naman tayo sa Asia. Which is why meron tayo mula sa China, Russia and India,” he said.
So far, frontline workers in health facilities, senior citizens, and persons with comorbidities received vaccines.
A total of 20 million Sputnik V doses, which is manufactured by Russian company Gamaleya, are expected to arrive in the Philippines after the Food and Drug Administration approved its emergency use authorization.
The government also assured the public that there will be enough vaccine doses for the mass immunization of over 70 million Filipinos this 2021.