THE National Task Force Against COVID-19 (NTF) gave the assurance to the public that the government, especially the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID), is already mapping out preparations and is aware of and closely monitoring all developments regarding the new COVID-19 variant called Omicron or B.1.1.529.
The World Health Organization has recently classified Omicron as a variant of concern and was first reported by the South African government on November 24.
“We’ve already sat down with the IATF regarding preparations for treatment therapies, ICUs, the hospitals, personnel, we’re all preparing them already,” NTF chief implementer and vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez, Jr. said.
He urged the public not to worry or panic, and just follow the minimum health standards and protocols like wearing of face masks. Galvez is hoping that the country can again do to Omicron what it did to the Delta variant in terms of managing the virus and preventing possible unnecessary loss of lives and to the economy.
Galvez said the IATF conducted an emergency meeting on Sunday to discuss some modifications in the Philippines’ border restrictions and control.
He added that Cabinet Secretary and Acting Presidential Spokesperson Karlo Nograles will soon announce the new policies regarding this matter.
Galvez also mentioned that the country’s vaccination strategies will continue to be recalibrated, improved, and strengthened in light of the threat of Omicron, as the Department of Health and other agencies monitor developments on the new variant of concern.
“With the coming of the Omicron, we want to make sure that our focused targets, the A1 to A3, the most vulnerable will all be vaccinated. In this case, if we achieve that, we can control critical disease, hospitalization and excessive deaths,” he added.
He reiterated the call to unvaccinated Filipinos to have themselves vaccinated. During the onslaught of the Delta, he noted that majority or 75-85 percent of casualties and severe cases were unvaccinated.
Despite the threat of the new COVID-19 variant, the vaccine czar said the national government remains committed to achieve its target milestones by next year.
This includes fully vaccinating at least 77 million Filipinos by the first quarter of 2022 and starting the inoculation for minors aged 5 to 11.
By the second quarter of 2022, the government shall have fully vaccinated 90 million individuals, in time for the national elections.
The rest of the Filipino population is expected to be fully vaccinated by the third quarter of next year based on the national government’s vaccination synchronization matrix.
As of November 27, Galvez said the Philippines has received a total of 142,153,340 COVID-19 doses since February from various manufacturers, and the government will continue to hold negotiations with different manufacturers to secure 90 more million vaccine doses for 2022.
Meanwhile, the first leg of the three-day Bayanihan, Bakunahan National COVID-19 Vaccination Days will proceed today, November 29 up to December 1 in 11,000 vaccination sites nationwide, with 160,000 volunteers expected to be activated and mobilized for this undertaking.
The event aims to inoculate at least 9 million Filipinos across 16 regions outside Metro Manila.
This campaign is focused on scaling up the inoculation rate of local government units for the first vaccine dose by covering up to 70 percent of their target populations.
After this initial event, a second leg of massive vaccinations will again happen on December 15 to 17. The focus is to ramp up the number of fully vaccinated individuals to achieve the government’s target of fully vaccinating at least 54 million Filipinos by year-end.
As of November 27, the Philippines has administered a total of 81,017,994 doses nationwide, with 45,286,049 administered as first doses, while 35,557,409 Filipinos are now fully vaccinated.