TAYTAY, Rizal – The local government of Taytay has submitted their Municipal COVID-19 Vaccination Plan to the Department of Health (DOH) way ahead of other localities.
In a Facebook post, Taytay Mayor Joric Gacula said that their vaccine plan, which was submitted and duly received by the Office of the Secretary of the DOH, is aimed at taking back the locality to a state of normalcy in the earliest possible time if only to ensure that their town gets back on track.
“We have respectfully submitted to the Office of Health Secretary Francisco Duque III MD, the Taytay Municipal COVID-19 Vaccination Plan. And as soon as it gets approved and provided that supplies are already available, we would commence the process seen to immediately bring Taytay back to normalcy,” reads Gacula’s post.
On top of the P320-million allocation for the procurement of AstraZeneca and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, covering 90 percent of the town’s 371,500 residents, Gacula also hinted the availability of an above-par, town-based cold storage facility designed to preserve the potency of the vaccines.
“We have already allotted funds to defray the cost of the 90-percent efficient vaccines, we have also prepared a cold storage facility for them,” added Gacula, himself a COVID-19 survivor.
Taytay picked the AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines, with scientifically-backed efficacy of 90 percent and 94 percent respectively. Moreover, the decision to pick AstraZeneca is an offshoot of a recommendation made by local medical experts even as public consensus also pointed at the two western brands as choices for the vaccines.
“We find it necessary for the constituents to have confidence on the type of vaccine that would be injected to them. It doesn’t take an expert to understand where our local folks are coming from, especially after reports backed by science, came out – particularly on efficacy and potential risks.”
Coming from a family of doctors, the local chief executive explained that they are not bent on gambling local funds on a vaccine brand that doesn’t guarantee results – without necessarily mentioning brands of low-efficacy vaccines.
“We took the recommendation of our local medical community of significant value before we made our decision,” Gacula further said.
Under the municipal vaccination plan, vaccination centers would be put in place in each of their six barangays. Each vaccination center will be equipped with medical professionals who’ll be administering the inoculation, a recovery area where patients would be made to rest after receiving shots and an observation area if in any case the need arises.
Registration would start as soon as the DOH approves the LGU-crafted registration forms for the vaccination for proper monitoring.
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