Vax sites ordered to come up with list of substitute COVID-19 vaccine recipients
MANILA, Philippines — To ensure that coveted COVID-19 shots will not go to waste, the Department of Health ordered vaccination sites to a prepare substitution list in case people scheduled to receive jabs do not show up.
In a briefing Wednesday, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the agency had already directed managers of vaccination sites to come up with a “quick substitution list.”
“Vaccines are very valuable so we don’t want to have wastage in our deployment program. We have instructed already the initial sites for vaccination that they should have this number of individuals that should substitute for those who will be refusing on the day itself,” she said.
The quick substitution list must have at least 20% of the target vaccine recipients. For example, if 800 people are scheduled to be inoculated on the day of vaccination, there should be 160 back up vaccine recipients who can be contacted in case people back out or miss their appointment.
“We don’t have a basis for the 20%. We just want to be sure that if we have those who refuse on the day of vaccination, at least we have this reserve of 20%,” Vergeire said.
The guidelines of the quick substitution list are still being finalized but the health official said it must include those in the priority sectors.
The government faces the challenge of conducting a massive COVID-19 vaccination program, which relies heavily on public trust that vaccines are both effective and safe following the highly politicized Dengvaxia controversy in 2017.
Almost half of Filipinos were not inclined to get vaccinated against COVID-19 mainly due to safety concerns, a survey released by Pulse Asia in January suggested. Only 32% of the 2,400 adult respondents said their will get COVID-19 jabs, while the remaining 21% were undecided.
A separate Social Weather Stations survey released last year showed that 66% of adult Filipinos were willing to receive COVID-19 jabs, while 31% were not.
The government is aiming to secure a total of 146 to 148 vaccine doses to inoculate at least 50 million people this year alone but it has yet to execute definitive supply agreements with pharmaceutical companies.
Officials are anticipating the arrival of an initial batch of 117,000 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine obtained through the COVAX facility this month. Once they arrive, these limited jabs will benefit medical frontliners.
- Latest
- Trending
