Capitol eyes 35,000 daily inoculations

The Iloilo provincial government will assemble more vaccination teams to reach its target of 35,000 persons inoculated daily until December 2021.

A press release from the Capitol said Gov. Arthur Defensor Jr. issued Executive Order No. 628 containing strategies to be adopted by the 42 municipalities and the City of Passi to boost their vaccination coverage.

The provincial government, together with the local task forces and partner agencies, will deploy more vaccination teams to target municipalities.

Personnel of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Philippine National Police (PNP), and the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) as well as members of the local task forces will be tapped to augment the vaccination teams.

The province is also currently implementing a barangay-based vaccination program which has already inoculated 21,935 individuals in 81 barangays.

Defensor said municipalities should also revisit their vaccination program in terms of human resource, logistics, budget and strategies.

There is a need to improve supply chain management to prepare for bigger vaccine allocations from the national government.

Defensor assured that there are enough vaccines to support the province’s vaccination target.

The National Vaccination Operations Center (NVOC) will allot roughly 9 million vaccines for Western Visayas for the fourth quarter of the year.

As of Oct 26, 2021, a total of 344,973 individuals or 24 percent of the target population in the province were fully vaccinated.

The province aims to inoculate 1,448,757 individuals to reach herd immunity.

Increasing the province’s vaccination coverage would eventually lead to relaxed health protocols and quarantine measures, according to Defensor.

“The more vaccines that we administer, the less strict we are because of our confidence in the vaccines,” he said.

Furthermore, the province is preparing for a possible surge in cases in January 2022 because of the Christmas season.