DOH: COVID-19 vaccination 'substitution list' must include health workers
MANILA, Philippines (Updated 5:31 p.m.) — Only health workers are allowed to be included in the “quick substitution list” for vaccination as they are currently the top priority in the country’s COVID-19 inoculation efforts, the Department of Health stressed Friday.
The “quick substitution list” includes people who can get COVID-19 vaccines in case individuals scheduled to receive jabs do not show up. Vaccination sites had been briefed and ordered to prepare substitution lists that must include health workers prior to the start of COVID-19 immunization program on March 1.
“We also emphasized in this protocol and also during town hall meetings that those who will be included in the quick substitution list would also be a part of our priority sector for now, which are the healthcare workers who are our frontliners,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said.
“Your quick substitution list should include all health workers and frontliners and who are directly caring for our COVID-19 patients,” she added.
The health official said vaccination sites had been told to include workers of nearby private hospitals and clinics in the inoculation efforts.
“As long as there are still healthcare workers who are not vaccinated, you’re supposed to continue and look for them and vaccinate them,” she said.
The country has administered 508,332 doses of COVID-19 vaccines as first shots as of March 23. The government is aiming to vaccinate 1.8 million health workers across the archipelago.
Other sectors
The DOH official made the statement after Parañaque City Mayor Edwin Olivarez said that actor Mark Anthony Fernandez got vaccinated because he was supposedly part of the city’s substitution list. Olivarez said the actor was eligible for vaccination as he has depression and hypertension.
Vergeire said the agency recognizes an individual diagnosed with depression as a person with co-moborbidity but she stressed that the government has yet to complete vaccinating healthcare workers.
Current vaccination efforts are focused on frontline workers in health facilities (A1). Next in line are senior citizens (A2), followed by persons with comorbidities (A3), frontline personnel in essential sectors (A4) and the indigent population (A5).
Vergeire added only the national government can give instructions if hospitals and local government units can vaccinate the next sector after healthcare workers.
As reports of local official skipping the queue for COVID-19 inoculation surface, authorities appealed to public servants to follow the government’s prioritization framework. Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. even said Filipinos have a “moral obligation” to let medical frontliners receive the limited jabs first.
The country may risk losing millions of much needed vaccines supplied by the COVAX facility if it fails to follow prioritization commitments. The government is bound to get millions of free COVID-19 shots from the WHO-led effort, enough to immunize at least 15% of its population against the disease.
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