We would like to thank all government officials, civil society leaders, and personalities who wish to join our vaccination campaign in encouraging the Filipino people to get inoculated. We value your support and appreciate your intention to help us boost the people’s confidence in the vaccines even as volunteering to take the jab in public. Indeed, seeing our leaders getting inoculated will significantly affect the perception and decision of our countrymen on the vaccine program.
However, due to the limited global supply of vaccines and following the recommendation of the National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NITAG) along with the directive of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte, the allocation of vaccines must strictly follow the priority framework issued by the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) to ensure that those who have the highest risk of exposure and death will be protected.
The framework prioritizes medical frontliners and healthcare workers to be followed by our senior citizens and other sectors. This prioritization primarily ensures that we will be able to protect and preserve our healthcare system as we continue to battle this pandemic.
The same priority groups have also been identified by the World Health Organization with respect to the vaccine rollout of almost 44 million doses from the COVAX facility. All the doses from COVAX must first be administered to the agreed upon priority groups starting with healthcare workers . Giving the vaccines to other sectors when not all healthcare workers have been vaccinated will jeopardize succeeding deliveries from COVAX.
Hence, all vaccine supplies that we have received and will be delivered this month are specifically allocated to all healthcare workers from all regions across the country. Initial deliveries for April will also follow this allocation until we have completely inoculated nearly two million individuals under this sector.
The succeeding sectors in the priority list, including those who will take part in boosting public trust on the vaccines, will be attended as soon as we receive the supplies for the second and third quarters.
We remind our countrymen especially our co-workers in government that in these trying times, it is our moral obligation to ensure that our healthcare system is protected and will be able to withstand possible spikes in COVID 19 cases. By respecting and following the priority framework, we will be able to reduce COVID-19 morbidity and mortality, protect the populations most at-risk to the disease, slow down the transmission rate, and minimize social and economic disruptions. We need to preserve our healthcare institution.
